BAM vs MBA's

The idea of entrepreneurship is an old one, probably as old as mankind itself in some regards.  My company/school that I’m working for is currently trying to push that agenda onto as many people as we can think of.  Just this summer alone we’ve held two different conferences; one for church planters and one for orphanage directors to try and encourage them to be entrepreneurs and be self-sustaining instead of relying on outside support.

In addition to those conferences we held earlier this summer, this coming week we’re holding the first ever BAM conference in Myanmar which I’m hugely excited about.  The wind was taken out of my sails a bit though when I learned I would be needed to be back at the office in the afternoons to hold down the ranch as it were.  BAM stands for Business as Mission, a growing movement among God’s people that has huge implications and goals.  I can’t wait till the conference and when it starts on Wednesday, we have a couple of speakers from the states coming that have been part of this movement for quite some time so I can’t wait to hear from them.

In my humble opinion, ah, there’s that dangerous word again, opinion, teaching entrepreneurship is much more useful than the classic MBA degree.  I wonder how many MBA’s are currently baristas because they were never taught how to launch their own business?  I also wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year on getting MBA’s when those same people probably could’ve launched their own business with much less training if it was focused instead on helping them launch a business.

Small businesses are the backbone of any country’s economy, at least the economies that work well.  It is arguable as to whether or not any country’s economy is doing really stellar these days, maybe China?  They just slowed down to a 7% growth rate.  That’s pretty mind-blowing to me, although a friend told me here that you typically want about a 15% growth rate in developing countries to help people rise to the middle class.  Can you imagine a 15% growth rate??  I know I sure can’t!  We’re lucky in the states if we break 2% each year these days.  Bill McKibben argues in Deep Economy that you eventually reach a place of after growth but that’s for another day and discussion.

As any small businessman will tell you in America, there are way too many regulations.  My pastor asked me why I didn’t want to start an entrepreneurship school in America and that was my reply, there are too many regulations for small businesses in America.  Why would I want that headache to begin with? There would be huge regulations on my own school to start with and on subsequent businesses that we helped launch.  Maybe someone with more patience will come along and do something like that, but I dare say that’s not where I would be best used.  I honestly don’t know about all the regulations in America since I haven’t been in business, I’m just simply spitting back what my dad and other small business people have told me over the past few years in particular.  In my opinion a good start would be with the tax structure.  As I understand it we have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.  That’s obviously not that efficient since the effective tax rate is much lower for a lion’s share of corporations.  Wouldn’t it be better to just do away with loopholes and bring down the overall rate?