Analysis. Romanian execs seeking entrepreneurship exposure through MBA education

Becoming an entrepreneur and taking a shot at a game-changing business are crossing the minds of Romanian executives in middle and top management positions, who are pursuing MBA studies.

The start-up culture, marked by nimble firms that face significant risks in their first stages of development, is also playing a bigger role in the modules of the Executive MBA Bucharest, organized by WU Executive Academy. With their graduation ceremony having taken place in mid-February in Vienna, BR talked to some of the executives about their plans to start businesses. Some of the graduates have already founded companies and are exploring additional investments.

The largest class of students of the Bucharest-based MBA started their course in 2016. Close to two thirds of the 29 international managers came from Romania, but the cohort also included executives from Austria, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. One third of the participants came from IT and telecommunications, alongside managers from financial services, energy and manufacturing. Some 35 percent of the students in the average class are female. The average age of those enrolled in the program stands at 35.

From MBA to entrepreneur

Romanian managers with more than a decade of experience in top positions had hands-on experience of creating their own firms during the program and spent time on the ground to see how early stage firms develop. Having made visits to Vienna and Minneapolis in the US, aside from their courses in Bucharest, they were exposed to a global business perspective and the manner in which innovative firms have the potential to disrupt well established companies.

“There was a really good mix between corporate clients, corporate vision, thinking big and entrepreneurial,” Alexandru Bold, founder at Bold Development, told BR.

He is one of the graduates of the newest cohort of WU’s MBA program in Bucharest. In order to complete the program, he had to prepare an entrepreneurship initiative. Together with his team, he came up with a co-living concept for London. He worked on the project with Liliana Libocor and Mihnea Craciun.

“For instance, we went to an accelerator, a great hub that is incubating and uniting start-ups with big businesses, because then the big corporations are able to diversify their portfolio, and the start-ups get knowledge and training. We had a chance, and it was like an X-Ray, these 14 months, of business. We were exposed to all the ways, all the mistakes and all the good decisions that could be made in order to develop a new business or further change the business that you have, so there is some entrepreneurialism and innovation coming into the business to get it ready for the future,” said Bold. After building a business case on this idea, he believes that it has significant potential to become reality.

“Indeed, it would probably be easier to do it in Romania and we are looking for potential investors that could finance real estate developers,” said Bold.

Elsewhere, Claudiu Hila, general manager of Pallex Romania, who also graduated from the MBA program in February, says he is still debating with his colleagues the implementation of the idea they presented in Vienna. Hila and two colleagues presented the market introduction of a 100 percent organic ready-to-drink tea product on the Austrian market called TiiJoy. He worked on the project with Jorg Six and Cristina Nedelcu.

“You either have the entrepreneurship bug in your genes or you don’t, but there is a serious dose of exposure to entrepreneurship and the quality of the program helped us to get to this point (…) to be close to launching this new business and having a lot of capabilities, as well as knowing from where to get these capabilities to make a business,” Hila told BR.

Meanwhile, Alina Andrei, founder of ‎Cabot Transfer Pricing, says that after founding her company, she would like to invest in other businesses.

WU’s MBA programs have over 3,500 graduates, of whom 260 are alumni from the Bucharest-based operations.

The dean of the WU Executive Academy, Professor Barbara Stottinger, says that 13 percent of the MBA alumni become entrepreneurs.

“We will put a little bit more emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship,” added Professor Phillip Nell, academic director of the executive MBA Bucharest (professor for Global Strategy, Competence Center for Emerging Markets & CEE at WU).

Some of the Romanian executives say they are keeping the entrepreneurship idea in their back of their minds and might remain on the boards of large companies for a while. Another statistic provided by the dean is that alumni see their income increase by around 33 percent on average in their first year since graduation. She added that 80 percent of the alumni change jobs within three years, with half moving to new companies.

“I’m thinking of becoming an entrepreneur in four or five years,” says Minel Ciurea, general manager of Philips Orastie, a graduate of the Executive MBA Bucharest. He is joined by Teodor Adrian Apostoleanu, vice-president of global payroll operations at Oracle, whose personal opinion is that many graduates of the program want to start their own business.

Meanwhile, Hortensia Nastase, vice-president of creative services at Lowe Groupe Romania, says, “I’m not thinking of any other kind of entrepreneurship than what I’m doing right now.”

Who’s footing the MBA bill?

MBA programs continue to come with hefty costs and students are able to rely less on the support of companies.

“We mostly see students financing an MBA program by themselves. Companies have cut back on their support,” said the dean. The tuition fee for the Executive MBA Bucharest stands at EUR 35,000, but WU says it can award scholarships that can cover up to 35 percent of the total cost under certain conditions.

Then, there are challenges related to work-life balance. Students have to take classes in international residences and spend their weekends or evenings studying. This can impact their family life, and some students said it was crucial to have a supportive partner that understands what an MBA program entails. The development of some online modules might help relieve this pressure.

The academy has developed this business line to complement the hours students spend face to face with professors.

Representatives of WU have suggested that MBA students still prefer to spend their time in classes and work on projects with executives. In fact, WU officials and students say that the network of contacts created during the 14-15 months of courses can be an asset for executives in their future roles.

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