Between 2007 and 2011, I completed my Master of Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Western Australia. It was a great experience, I learnt a lot and met some wonderful people. But an MBA can be an expensive and slow way to learn. Today, the same knowledge is available faster, cheaper, and often better. You can read the same books, study the same frameworks, and apply them in real time by starting a business or joining a fast-growing one. Learning by doing will often beat learning in a lecture theatre.
That said, my MBA taught me several things I still use today in business and to assess the industries and companies we look at investing in. What surprised me was how many case studies and topics were based on widely available business books, and how much of the learning was about memorising frameworks developed by big consulting firms. But those frameworks can be powerful if you know when and how to use them.
Here are three of my favourites:
1. Porter’s Five Forces
Michael Porter’s model is one of the best ways to assess the attractiveness of an industry. It forces you to look beyond surface-level growth stories and into the structural dynamics. It covers everything from the competitive rivalry, supplier power, buyer power, the threat of new entrants, and the threat of substitutes. It’s simple, but it sharpens your thinking before you commit capital or resources.
2. Blue Ocean Strategy
Based on the book by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, this is about finding uncontested market space rather than battling competitors head-on. The Cirque du Soleil example still stands out: they didn’t try to be a better circus; they created something entirely new by combining theatre and acrobatics. Tesla didn’t just make another car, it redefined what a car could be, with software at its core. Apple did the same with the iPhone, turning a phone into a lifestyle platform. It’s a reminder that differentiation is often more valuable than dominance.
3. Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model
Implementing change inside organisations is difficult. John Kotter’s framework breaks it down into a sequence of 8 distinct steps. Create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a vision, communicate it, empower action, generate quick wins, consolidate gains, and anchor the change in culture. It’s a blueprint for getting people to move in the same direction when the status quo is comfortable but no longer viable.
Today, there are so many ways you can learn these things, from books to podcasts, there are resources that let you learn on demand, you can even ask ChatGPT to design a course and test you on the content. If you dedicated a single week to reading Blue Ocean Strategy, Leading Change, and a good summary of Porter’s Five Forces, you’d have started accumulating the strategic foundation that often takes MBA students years and a lot of expense to collect.
An MBA will give you structure, deadlines, and a network. But in today’s world, curiosity and execution will get you further, faster. If you want an MBA’s worth of insight, start with these three frameworks and read all the case studies you can find from Harvard Business School, but for all the access to knowledge, what matters most is building something. The most important lesson in today's fast paced world is that building and learning go hand in hand. You must do both.
General Disclaimer: This information is of a general nature only and may not be relevant to your particular circumstances. The circumstances of each investor are different, and you should seek advice from an investment adviser who can consider if the strategies and products are right for you. Historical performance is often not a reliable indicator of future performance. You should not rely solely on historical performance to make investment decisions.