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SEPTEMBER 2002 MBA JOURNAL: INTRODUCTION Dean Chang: Who I Am, and Why B-School Is for Me "I hope my journal entries make more prospective MBA students aware of the EMBA option and shed some light on the EMBA experience for those considering this option." Welcome to what I believe is the inaugural BusinessWeek Online EMBA Journal. This is not a bid-by-bid account of an auction in the advanced degrees section of eBay, nor is this a quick start guide to purchasing an insta-cyber-MBA off a Web site. Though they share a similar acronym, an EMBA is not an e-MBA. Common EMBA Myths 1) Myth #1: An EMBA is an e-MBA. EMBA stands for Executive MBA and has been offered by some of the top B-schools, including Wharton, Chicago, Northwestern, and Columbia, since the 1960s. The EMBA is the same degree on the same campus with the same classroom requirements, same faculty, and same prestige as the traditional MBA. The difference is that EMBA students are generally (but not always, see Myth #2) senior managers who continue to work full-time during the program. EMBA programs typically hold classes every other week on Friday and Saturday for two straight years, summers included. This means your company must be willing to have you out of the office (and for the most part out of touch) every other Friday. BusinessWeek Online has a wealth of articles and information about EMBA programs, so I won't go into the details here. 2) Myth #2: EMBA programs are just for executives. Typical EMBA students are in their mid-30s, have 8 to 10 years of work experience, and are often part of the senior management team of their companies. However, there are also students under 30 and/or not in senior management positions but whose employers believe have great management potential. Bottom line: You don't have to be a VP or officer of your company to be considered for the EMBA program. 3) Myth #3: EMBA programs are insanely more expensive than traditional MBA programs. While EMBA programs are definitely more expensive (and much more lucrative for the schools) than traditional programs, EMBA programs are actually a better bargain than traditional programs when you consider the fact that EMBA students continue to earn their full-time salaries over the two years while they are in school. Factor in the opportunity cost of not working for two years and the cost of a top traditional MBA program can run over $200,000. Wharton's New West Coast EMBA My name is Dean Chang, and in May 2002, I began the two-year Wharton Executive MBA (WEMBA) Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton West campus located in San Francisco, California. It's been almost a full year since I first began looking into business school, eventually settling on this lesser known MBA route. At that time, I faithfully read many of the insightful and helpful MBA Journals here on BusinessWeek Online. But, unfortunately, none of them offered the perspective of someone in an EMBA program. I hope my journal entries make more prospective MBA students aware of the EMBA option and shed some light on the EMBA experience for those considering this option. From Stanford to Startup to WEMBA My passion is high technology entrepreneurship and management. I love defining and leading the strategy that brings cutting edge high tech businesses to new markets. All my MBA program research has convinced me that I need the WEMBA program to continue to advance along this path. This vision was not always so clear. Initially, I focused on building the best and broadest technical foundation possible through my undergraduate engineering studies at MIT followed by my PhD engineering studies at Stanford. Then, bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, I parlayed my doctoral research in robotics into a position as one of the principals at a fledgling startup company that was out to change the world with cool technology. This experience has been immensely successful and rewarding, and it has also crystallized my professional calling. Over seven years, I've been an integral part of and an astonished witness to Immersion's meteoric rise to a $100M, 150-person public company. Along the way, I've gotten wonderful exposure to management, strategic partnerships, product development, technology licensing, press relations, product and channel marketing, and venture and public financing. It has also become apparent to me that I am ideally suited for and most excited by a career of nurturing cutting-edge technologies into viable businesses. As the CTO of Immersion, I have gone as far as I can along a technology-based career path. This is the perfect time for WEMBA. While I lead several significant business development and marketing efforts, my role is still primarily rooted in engineering and technology. If I am to take the next big step in my career, I will need as solid a foundation in areas such as finance, sales and marketing, operations, and international business as I have in technology. For instance, I currently lack the financial skills to analyze Immersion's acquisitions and financing opportunities from an accounting and bottom line perspective. In engineering, the "brute force" method can sometimes yield a solution that is technically correct, but it often is neither elegant nor efficient and usually fails to take advantage of engineering tenets. Though my "brute force" business practices have generally been successful so far, I have reached the point where I now need an exceptional program like WEMBA to bring my overall management skills up to par with my formal technical skills. Immersion also stands to benefit from my participation in the WEMBA program. The company has created some exciting new markets but now needs to mature and squeeze the most efficiency out of these businesses. The addition of a Wharton MBA (and its network) to the executive team can only aid this process. Why WEMBA? So why did I choose WEMBA over traditional MBA programs? First, WEMBA has the same faculty, has the same requirements, and awards the same degree with the same prestige as the BusinessWeek #1-ranked traditional Wharton MBA program - but allows me to continue working full-time at Immersion. Second, the San Francisco WEMBA West campus is a mere 50 miles from the heart of Silicon Valley and from my home. Third, I believe the EMBA program is more family-friendly than traditional MBA programs. As a 34-year-old father of two toddlers, I had horrible visions of being in a traditional full-time program and being labeled the old married guy with kids no one wants in their study group because I could rarely make the nightly study group meetings/beer socials at the local dive bar. WEMBA will undoubtedly eat into some of the weekend and weeknight time I set aside for family. But apart from the two very intense days I'm on campus every other week, I will have a lot of flexibility in how I divide up my time among my family, my job, and Wharton. Finally, I believe that I will get a lot more out of the WEMBA program than a traditional MBA program. Just as my strength in technology was built on both first-rate education and select work experience, the skills I will gain at WEMBA will be built on an unparalleled combination of formal classroom lessons and the vast collective insights and experiences of real-world executives from myriad industries, backgrounds, and cultures. I have friends who went to B-school in their mid-20s now say that the wisdom they've gained in their 5-plus years in the workplace since B-school would have been nice to have had when they were in B-school. Now imagine that everyone in your class is a successful senior manager who has that wisdom garnered from years of successes (and mistakes). I can't think of a better forum for networking, for applying classroom concepts to the real world, and for exchanging and debating views founded in experience and not conjecture. That's something you'd have a hard time finding anywhere ... even on eBay.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | SEPTEMBER Learn about your online education options |
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