Take marketing, for example. It is often misinterpreted as purely "promotion" when really it also encompasses product development, pricing and placement. For me, product development and placement come naturally while I find branding to be tremendously difficult, certainly more difficult than any technical challenge I've ever faced. What one person finds "easy" or "hard" is dependent on a lot of factors, including personality type, skills, what sector that person is operating in, etc. For one product or service, pricing may be extremely simple while in another it might require significant market analysis.

Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company. On the other hand, someone might find advanced corporate finance "hard," but unless he or she wants to work in a job in which it would apply, it's largely useless for that person.

FWIW, I'm not in an MBA program, but I do the web business thing while my wife is in a top-tier MBA program and is an exec in the financial industry. She has an analytical background but prefers strategy and operations. I know one of the things she finds both challenging and valuable is being exposed to fields that are outside of her interests but are important for having a well-rounded view of how businesses and marketplaces function. In bad business conditions this is especially valuable since you can't just stumble and guess your way around like you can when money flows easily.

I up-vote on this alone! I actually have an essay about this that I plan on posting one day. Marketing is one of the most misunderstood aspects of business from those not involved in it. I'd guess that 9 out of 10 people think marketing is advertising and promotion.

In reality, as you said, developing a product is marketing. Understanding markets, segments, what the segments value and how to create a competitive product within those boundaries is extremely difficult and really is The the core of what a business is. The marketing strategy lies well beyond promotions and really encompasses the life of the business.

no doubt but the question was explicitly what part of the coursework was hard, not the actual practice of business, which we all acknowledge is very hard.

"Also, whether a person finds something "hard" or not doesn't directly relate to its value. I wouldn't find it "hard" to spend hours reading case studies, but they are tremendously valuable since you can learn from other companies' successes and failures and apply them to your own company."

I didn't claim any of that. The question was solely about a statement in the original post and asking for examples in order to understand the point made, because in my experience MBA coursework is an order of magnitude easier than a masters in say Physics. My experience is not necessarily universal of course.

I don't believe an MBA is useless, but I am not so sure what quantum of value it does have. Hence the question.

An MBA is practicing business, at least at the top tier schools (possibly at the others, I don't know). Most of the focus is on case studies and group projects tackling real business issues, usually from real businesses, sometimes simulating what you would do and sometimes actually dealing with the actual company. Group projects in part time programs are frequently based on things actually occurring at a business one of the group members works at or runs, while in full time programs students will work with companies on existing issues. Traditional coursework is more commonly found in the the strictly analytical finance and economics classes.

This is the first time I've ever heard an mba as practice (vs a study of theory) in running a business. Great insight (if true).

"Most of the focus is on case studies"

A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think. If this concept is adopted , analysing Napoleon's campaigns would be "practicing war" , reading about Bruce Lee's fighting style(and even debating about it) would be "practicing KUng Fu" and an analysis of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be "practicing music".

" and group projects tackling real business issues,"

This is more like it. What percentage of an MBA do you think would involve running (parts of) a real business? 25 %, 50 %?

"This past quarter, for instance, her group in one class did all the business planning for a group member's business that he is now creating."

Well, this will become a "real business" when it is actually running? I mean, till it runs this planning is as good as anyone else's?

"In other cases, they've done restructuring plans that are then implemented by the company. "

This is more in line with "practicing business". Thanks for the input. Thought provoking.

Considering that this is the basic model of MBA programs, not to mention that it's also the basic model of pretty much any professional graduate program in pretty much any field, I'm left wondering how this is the first time you've encountered it.

A case study is not quite practice, more like a review I'd think.

When you are reading, but not a project. Even if it's a project to make a decision based on historical conditions, students are doing exactly what they'd be doing if they were running the company or division, and in most cases they are or will be running those or similar companies and divisions making the same kinds of decisions in the same ways, which is the whole point.

This is more like it

During the course of working on the project it's really exactly the same as the above.

Well, this will become a "real business" when it is actually running? I mean, till it runs this planning is as good as anyone else's? ... This is more in line with "practicing business"

It's really no different. Look, her school is a top-tier business school and the business we are talking about aren't social web startups. When you are dealing with industries that require a large capital investment, it's often much harder to start and the consequences much worse when you fail. I've had to take more than 6 figures of investment for a web company and I've never needed to give up more than equity and sometimes some strategic guidance, whereas in other industries I might expect to be signing a personal guarantee, possibly even having an investor become an integral part of operations. So when we are talking about planning a business, we aren't talking about a web company with a one page business plan.

A little more practical and more marketing aligned, doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable.

With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize. They give you so much work that you can not possibly get it all complete at the level of excellence in which you want to operate so you have to learn when something is good enough and move on to the next pressing issue. Which, BTW, is pretty much what you need to do in a startup as well.

Well I don't think the y combinator is a particularly complex concept and I did accept finance as hard and explicitly asked for non finance examples, :-) but that said I see your point (upvoted!).

"doing real market research for a natural foods store to determine if they should expand their footprint to other locations or just increase the size of their current store. It took over a month to design the questionnaire before the prof deemed it acceptable."

If I understand this correctly, the coursework is hard to the degree it intersects running a real business (in this case, as you said, doing " real market research for a natural foods store".

"With that said, the real challenge, and what any top school does, is teach students how to prioritize."

yes, but this is hardly unique to an MBA :-)

One of the more difficult courses I had focused on managing small-to-medium businesses. The issues and cases we discussed tended not to be quantitative in nature, but really honed critical thinking. A particular case I remember dealt with a struggling, family-owned company whose founder/CEO had just died in the midst of an IP lawsuit, etc. (I don't remember all the details). Imagine you are brought in to run the company. What do you do first, second, third, fourth? The challenges are legal, financial, technical, and interpersonal. There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait? What information do you need and from where are you going to get it? The answers are not always obvious and don't necessarily fit inside a neat framework. This is "hard" in a different way from advanced quantitative analysis of futures and options.

And how do you know any of the answers you come up with to the above questions are the correct ones?

For example, "There are multiple crises: which do you delegate, which have to be dealt with immediately, and which can wait?"

So I say "delegate crisis one and deal with crisis two immediately". You reverse that answer. Who is right? I am sure two intelligent people can go back and forth for quite a while justifying each answer. Such questions arise in the social sciences as well.

If you have at least a simulation, you can ,(within the assumptions of the simulation - how these map to the real world is a separate discussion/debate) try out your "answers" and see which one works better.

In the absence of a vlaidating/correcting mechanism, how can you ever know what the right answer is or how good your "solution" is?

I've personally found MBA case studies of dubious instructional value (but great entertainment value). It gives you something to do in class, but how much does it really teach?

Where there isn't a way to judge the validity or otherwise of an answer, (in my experience) the most articulate person "wins" and since you are not responsible for implementing the answer in the real word and suffer the consequences therof, it is fairly easy to construct an argument for one ooption or the other. What stops this from happening in an MBA "case study"?

The uniqueness of an MBA is that it teaches how to think strategically about a business.

While I can not articulate exactly 'what' it teaches, I do know that often times in the face of new circumstances and rapidly changing conditions it has enabled me to ask the right questions and create the right framework to make a decision.

What I love about startups is they require this type of thinking. It has helped me tremendously in scaling technology companies.

If you acquired this by doing an MBA this is certainly a definite value add :-).