Should Entrepreneurs Go to Business School?How a business degree drives innovation and motivates entrepreneurs to pursue impactful ideas.

Great business ideas come from inspiration and a willingness to try and fail continuously. There's no better environment to foster those forces than at business school. "When you go to business school, you're instantly connected to a network of likeminded individuals who've been there and done it," says Jared Cannon, who graduated from theFox School of Business at Temple Universitybefore founding his company,Simply Good Jars.

"There's accelerated relationship building and this foundational knowledge building that you get while there," he explains.

For Cannon, who worked as a chef and in restaurants prior to going to business school in 2014, starting a company of his own initially seemed like an unattainable dream. That was until he started working toward a graduate degree at the Fox School and found himself in classes that encouraged him to tease out his idea for a fresh prepared food distribution business.

商学院学生,参加的手-on classes and meeting with real-world executives and investors is often the push needed to take them from idea to execution, whatever career path they're looking to pursue. "We promote entrepreneurial thinking for everyone," says Ellen Weber, executive director of Temple University'sInnovation and Entrepreneurship Institute(IEI) andMid-Atlantic Diamond Ventures. "Even if you don't go down the entrepreneurial path, it helps with creative problem solving."

Here are some crucial reasons that make business school an invaluable career growth experience for budding business owners and beyond.

Motivating and inspiring entrepreneurs.

Demystifying the path to entrepreneurship and what it takes to start and run a business is one of the most important ways to inspire would-be founders to go after their business ideas.

For example, Weber, who teaches a class on developing funding for startups, often finds that once students learn the nuts and bolts of what they actually need to get an idea off the ground, there is little stopping them. Her students have the opportunity to deliver a 12-minute pitch to a jury of real-world investors and get their feedback—an experience most students find invaluable.

Similarly, activities outside the classroom like idea competitions and networking events, create spaces for students to share their ideas and get a feel for what's happening in the startup world. "A lot of times students will see judges interested in their idea, and they are motivated to work on it more," Weber says.

Teaching executives how best to embrace change.

Taking an open-minded and flexible approach to problem-solving is another key skill students develop in business school. Learning the importance of pivoting to better match changing market needs is a crucial skill every business person needs to have in this fast-paced economy.

"I love watching the students pivot their ideas. As soon as they start doing the financial forecast and seeing the issues in the logic, and as soon as they start thinking about their suppliers and distributors—all of those pieces—they pivot," Weber says. "Classes are very experiential. They get to test their ideas to see what works and what doesn't."

For Oscar Perez, a medical doctor by training who joined the Fox School program in 2013, his business school experience transformed the way he approached his scientific research on developing drugs. While his research started with a focus in malaria and moved into other specializations, going to business school made him realize the importance of thinking about how his research could have different applications that would better translate into actual drugs on the market.

"You become more flexible with your ideas," Perez says. "Business school is where I learned to apply my technology and research differently. At the end of the program, I put together a business plan and turned my idea into a company."

Building businesses that make a positive social impact.

Positively affecting the community, environment, and society at large is an increasingly important skill in our globalized economy. For many students going to business school, developing that social awareness about how their idea will impact others is important to shaping and executing it.

"When students come in, sometimes the problems they are trying to solve are small. As they go through business school, the social awareness they bring in becomes bigger," Weber says. "Many of them want to do something that has impact and their view of impact grows over time. They understand more about what it really means to make a difference."

That focus on positively affecting the community and society resonates across industries and ideas. "I took a social impact business course during the program and that's what inspired a socially-conscious aspect to the business model we created," Cannon says.

考虑社会影响供应chain, in sourcing ingredients and building and developing the company's focus has helped him grow it from a fledgling idea to a 21-person-and-growing business. "Going through that experience was instrumental in seeing what works and what doesn't work in that kind of team environment," he says.

Click hereto learn more about how Temple's Fox School of Business can advance your entrepreneurial and business school ambitions, including theFox MS in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurshipand theFox MBA.