This article is from WeChat official account:GGV source capital (ID: GGVCapital) , author: GGV GGV capital, title figure from: vision China
Hello everyone, this is Xiaoji Liangmaqiao, a fruitless VC employee.
Today, let’s talk about MBA. The guest we invited in this issue is Professor Zhu Weiming. He is a visiting professor at MIT, a professor of operations management at IESE Business School, and an expert in studying the operating economy and sharing economy of Chinese Internet companies. He is also an advisor to JD.com and Meituan.
Is MBA an IQ tax? Can I really double my salary after studying an MBA?
Come, let’s find the answer together.
Lily: Hello everyone, welcome to the Liangmaqiao Reception Room. I am your Xiaoyuan. The guest we invited today is Professor Zhu Weiming. Professor Zhu is a visiting professor at MIT and a professor of operations management at IESE Business School. He is also an expert on the operational economy and sharing economy of Chinese Internet companies. He is also an advisor to JD.com and Meituan.
I know that you actually studied physics at the University of Hong Kong and graduated with first-class honors. However, your PhD shifted to the direction of operation management and now you are working at IESE Business School. Does this career change mean that business school professors are more Is the career development of physics professors better?
Zhu Weiming: I don’t think it’s necessarily better, but that everyone chooses a different path. Einstein said that success is genius and effort.Behind the actual hard work is perseverance and love. When everyone makes 300,000 dollars, you get 80,000 dollars in physics salary. And genius is not only smart, but also an epoch-making talent. I said that I might not have either of these two, so I simply change my career. Switching to this field is also a mixed result, because when I was in college, I studied physics and mathematics. Now my operation management is actually the application of mathematics statistics in business schools. Sometimes people call operation management the physics in the factory. A little side.
Lily: Today we are actually going to talk to you, is MBA an IQ tax? I know that you are a genius boy. You have graduated from a top business school at the age of 26, and then went to teach. At the age of 26, you taught. Facing so many students with excellent resumes, many are even older than you and have more successful careers. Why do you think they would listen to your lectures?
Zhu Weiming: This was also a big doubt for me at that time, but then I read a lot of articles, and I found that many Harvard professors also wrote articles to reflect on this issue: Who am I to Teach you? You are a boss, and although I may have consulted many companies, but I have been in my office, why can I teach you successful business people?
I think there may be two advantages. The first point is that teachers may look at more companies. As a teacher, I can have the opportunity to contact entrepreneurs from all over the world, in an industry, and many company managers or CEOs, he may have a certain vision. A certain width, but many times he only pays attention to himself, so if you introduce other experiences to him, he may not say that I can use it immediately, but this can broaden their thinking. This is one of them.
Secondly, I think a major responsibility of business teachers is to do scientific research in addition to teaching. Sometimes scientific research is summarized from the company’s operating experience, and sometimes it is to create new knowledge or discover new For example, one of the things the MIT team and I did is to look at the content of the pictures on the Airbnb website, the quality of the pictures, and what effect does it have on the sales of this house. When I talk about this thing, because it uses a lot of computer vision and statistical methods, when I talk about it, the boss may find it very fresh. For example, when I was in class in Europe, the bosses with Farfetch or Fendi would think, me. Models show their faces, and how to induce customers to buy with these photos of black models and white models, he thinks this is a very practical and new thing. So I think it can be helpful to the bosses from the perspective of scientific research and width.
Lily: What do you think is the difference between the MBA class and the physics class?
Zhu Weiming: I think it’s very different. The harder the physics class, the better, and the deeper the better. The teacher will ask you if you understand after writing the formula. But in the MBA is different, because everyone just came to work, and now when studying MBA, they are exposed to a lot of fresh and cool business models, many classes, they are also very busy, and then they look for work and internships, so In fact, The teacher in the MBA class is grabbing the attention of the students, so you need more joyful elements, or the element of grabbing his attention. When I went to New Oriental, I felt that the teacher talked too much jokes, and then I found that jokes are necessary. The purpose of the jokes is to let the students continue to listen to other things.
Lily: In fact, when it comes to MBA, we have two typical cognitions, one is expensive and the other is water. Do you think MBA’s high tuition fee of more than 1 million is worth it?
Zhu Weiming: This is a very good question. In fact, I’m going to do a small survey. First of all, I said that it is expensive. The absolute price is definitely expensive, but in fact, if you look at the current Other programs, many programs are also very expensive. For example, New York University’s MBA is actually almost US$78,000 a year in tuition, while its BA(Business Analytics ) Data Business Analysis is a tuition fee of $79,000. But the reason why everyone thinks MBA is expensive may be because I am still very empty after reading and I have not found a job, so I think it is expensive. If you double your salary in the second year, you will not think it is expensive.
Lily: Is there a lot of doubling of wages?
Zhu Weiming: There are actually quite a few. If you look at the Financial Times, there is a ranking. For the top 10 and 20 MBA students, many of the salary increases have reached more than 100%, almost all of them Within the range of 150,000 to 200,000 US dollars.
Lily: Is this also the case in China?
Zhu Weiming:Sometimes it’s not, because many companies abroad recognize this label for MBA. It is equivalent to your third-party school helping me to do a certification. These are excellent talents. Then I have this need to let these talents shine. Fever, so I will pay these salaries. But the domestic demand for MBAs seems not so great.
Lily: It seems not as good as 985 and 211.
Zhu Weiming: Yes, including many overseas MBAs who have returned to China. He may go to more foreign companies, such as Johnson&Johnson and the public. I know that some companies will have MBA trainees. Or MBA program, but it doesn’t seem to be as hot as abroad.
Lily: I talked to a friend who worked at Google before, and he told me that after finishing the MBA, he and the people around him are talented losers. How do you understand this sentence? words?
Zhu Weiming: I think it’s like this. The first point is that you have to determine what you are doing for your MBA. Some people may have a bachelor’s degree in engineering background, and even your bachelor’s degree Then I went to open a yoga studio. Now the yoga studio is going to expand. I have to make up some business knowledge. This kind of person will not think that he is a talented loser after finishing his MBA. He will not feel that he has no place to play. But some people may start a business or need the ability to write code in a technology company. If he goes to an MBA, it’s a little bit of a tree for him. What you end up with is completely different from what you think. Let’s go back to the BA business analysis project mentioned earlier. Many people may think that I want to go to a technology company to do a good-paying job, then you may be more suitable to study BA in this era.
Lily: Do you have any students, do you think he had that kind of essential change before and after he studied MBA, can you share an example of this with us?
Zhu Weiming: Yes, there was a Japanese student before. Others left after asking questions in my office. He exited the office facing me, and then closed the door. I couldn’t see him during the whole process. I didn’t speak much at the beginning of the class, but then there were many Spanish and American people in his team. Indians, everyone is very noisy. When he graduated, when he wore a small suit and talked freely, his temperament also changed. He became a person who could not only write code, but also introduce the output of this code toThe talents of the upper-level CEOs, I think this is a good change.
Lily: So did this person step out of his comfort zone after taking the MBA?
Zhu Weiming: Yes, I think it is like this. At that time, it was actually difficult to do when we were teaching, because there were generally two groups of people in the class. He was like a bimodel. The distribution, the group on the left may be particularly knowledgeable in mathematics, but can’t speak human words, just don’t speak this thing in business scenarios; the other kind of people come with their mouth open, but after listening, the substance may not be Especially many. Their comfort zones are different. Like people who just open their mouths, you need to let them know how to use numbers or data rationally, and use methods and models to assist your argument. And the group of people on the left who only count data, you have to bring him to the stage, let him give a report, and express these things in a way that everyone can understand.
Lily: It’s very interesting. In fact, when you look at the business school’s classroom, he gives people the impression that they are well-decorated, well-equipped, and the professors are knowledgeable and interesting, but I feel that tuition income seems to be difficult To support such faculty and hardware, I would like to ask you a very challenging question, do business schools make money?
Zhu Weiming: A simple answer is that many, many business schools do not make money, because if many business schools are public schools, undergraduate programs will not make much money, master programs can Earn some, but it is limited.
Lily: Since most business schools do not make money, each school basically has such a setting. What kind of responsibilities and responsibilities do you think it assumes in society?
Zhu Weiming: I think in addition to teaching you how to make money, the business school also teaches you how to give money in a compliant, legal, and humane way made money. Like our school, there is a special course on business ethics. At the same time, when we do operations and management, one of our themes is optimization and simplification. In many cases, it is inevitable that there will be layoffs and dismissals. , So our last lesson is very interesting. We are talking about when you don’t use the classic methods that we taught you this semester. That is to say, as a manager, sometimes you shouldn’t simply let These numbers and formulas will make the decision for you. You see, the people below shouldn’t be all resumes. We told him that everyAn individual is a biography. You have to respect this person’s profession and the dignity of this person. Doing business to make society prosper, one of the most important points of it is to teach everyone how to make money in a dignified way and an honest way.
Lily: What do you think is the greatest value of an MBA?
Zhu Weiming: When we go abroad, we are also gaining insights while studying. The knowledge we learn is only one aspect. On the other hand, you have a so-called global network and you know a lot. It’s because our teacher over there has to lead the team. For example, if one of the team members is from Saudi Arabia, he said that there are 10 camels in my family. I will tell you which camels run the fastest. This is a big idea. You don’t usually Will know; then some of them go to Europe to play on weekends, and then people from different countries have different opinions about things. I think this is a subtle influence on life or on people’s character.
I think MBA may be of great help to everyone in two points. One point is that you urgently need business knowledge and some negotiation skills and self-awareness. You need to change from a technical talent to a management talent. Then you go to MBA, but for example, I am an entrepreneur, and then this product fails, do you want to go to MBA, I think the answer is probably not the case. Or I was teaching an open class in Shanghai before, and a student asked, the teacher, I want to do algorithms, do I want to study an MBA? I said you read to do algorithms, you go to PhD, what do you do in MBA, so I think when asking if you want to read, first ask yourself what the problem is, and then what is the solution. MBA only Can solve a specific problem, if you have other problems, you need to find other solutions.
This article is from WeChat official account:GGV Jiyuan Capital (ID: GGVCapital), author: GGV GGV capital