What professor did you learn the most about business from?

[TexasHusker]

I spent 5 years doing my undergrad, as I changed my major from pre-med to business to English. Easily the most overall educational semesters I had were from an east Indian professor named Charmezel Dudt. One semester was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and one semester was Shakespearean works. I also had her for a summer class on Machiavelli's The Prince. I learned more about business and government from The Prince in that summer term than all of my other undergraduate studies, combined.

[corn18]

I was an EE major at the Naval Academy and I learned absolutely nothing about business. I took micro and macro economics but I have since learned that has very little to do with business. After 20 years in the military, I knew nothing about business. I went to work for a defense contractor and slowly started learning about business. Then I got a new boss in 2012 and followed him around for business reviews at the 55 divisions in our group and learned a LOT about how businesses work. At least defense businesses. Then I was president of a $100M division with 220 people and got to put what I knew to work. If it weren't for the employees and customers, running a business would be easy.

[james.hendrickson]

I learned from books

Here are some titles I found helpful. In no particular order:

One Thing, by Gary Keller

High Performance Habits, Brendan Bruchard

Leadership, James MacGregor Burns

High Output Management, Andrew S Grove

Competition Demystified, Greenwald and Kahn

Growing A Business, Paul Hawkin

So Good They Can't Ignore You, Cal Newport

Mastering The Rockefeller Habits, Verne Harnish

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini

The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker

Up The Organization, Townsend

Management 101, Stephen Soundering

Good Boss, Bad Boss, Sutton.

[HundredK]

I went to junior college for my first two years before transferring to a four year. By far, I learned more from the JC profs, because most of them were just adjuncts who also held jobs in the real world. So they'd be able to say, the book says this, but the real world actually does this. I often think that tenured profs should be required to periodically hold a position in what they teach. Their book knowledge is great, and honestly it's helpful to have the book knowledge, but it doesn't prepare you for the reality of working. Maybe tenured profs need another type of sabbatical where they take unpaid internships of a sort at companies (I'm sure we'd have to think of a better name than internships to help their egos). I did get a lot of value from the 4 year college and I would never say that experience was worthless. But they both provided a different sort of knowledge for sure.

[bjl584]

Most of my professors in undergrad hated capitalism and America.

Grad school was much better of an experience for me.
If I had to point to one class where I learned a ton, then it had to be an econ class that was taught by a local attorney.
He was a very interesting and very knowledgeable guy who was a very successful investor and businessman

[srblanco7]

I was an EE major at the Naval Academy and I learned absolutely nothing about business. I took micro and macro economics but I have since learned that has very little to do with business. After 20 years in the military, I knew nothing about business. I went to work for a defense contractor and slowly started learning about business. Then I got a new boss in 2012 and followed him around for business reviews at the 55 divisions in our group and learned a LOT about how businesses work. At least defense businesses. Then I was president of a $100M division with 220 people and got to put what I knew to work. If it weren't for the employees and customers, running a business would be easy.

My journey is something of a parallel. Graduated with an engineering degree and took economics classes along the way, but didn't really understand business. Spent 10 years doing engineering and 10 years managing projects. Then transitioned to a VP role leading a group of project managers - which is the role transition from understanding project financials to understanding the business income statement. Found a internal mentor(s) that helped me to understand the income statement, balance sheet, etc... Eventually grew into a role leading roughly 40% of our overall business (about $100M/year gross revenue, as part of an employee owned company, seat on the Board of Directors) and led the M&A of a $10M/year addition to our business. After a couple years in that role, we sold to a global competitor (providing a different perspective on M&A). Still working for the global firm, but planning my exit...it's getting to be about that time .

[jenn_jenn]

This is such an interesting question. I have a undergraduate degree in Economics and my MBA. You’d think I would have an answer to this but I can honestly say I did not learn about business through school. I learned about concepts but only through professional experience did I learn about business. I’ve been very lucky to have some amazing mentors in my career - they are who I learned the most from.

This is why I refer to my degrees as the most expensive piece of paper I own. To me, they were a necessary check box on my resume but nothing more than that.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

None took intro econ and learned general stuff. Lots of reading. My major and DH's were in sciences. We learned a lot from professors and in our field professors often were on boards of startup biotechs because they had a good idea that the university sold. Of course it's hard to make money. One of DH's greatest contributions helps with the covid vaccine. We looked it up his patent and he created in grad school is mass produced and used today across the field. As for me? Mine helped as well with vaccine development as well from a different angle.

[nicholascam]

The most from business I found out when I was on the 1-st grade of the information technology faculty from my physics teacher named Yuri Bilak. That’s because this man had his own business, honestly he was a rich man. I remember how he gave me the best advice I use till now, he said: it is very important to constantly count your income and loss. Then, when you have enough statistics, you can prepare a future forecast for your business which is extremely important. And then I really took a bunch of information about that and this helped me a lot. Now I have my own furniture business and it goes pretty well.

[myrdale]

Dr. Maples taught the engineering economics class I took at Auburn. He had a story about being asked to determine which compressors were the list efficient, to which he responded "the pretty ones". The compressors were over heating, causing the paint to come off and the company would continually repaint them for some reason.

No clue who my actual economics teacher was, but it was a good class. Guns and butter and what such.

I don't remember the teacher's name I had in high school for government / economics, but she wasn't bad. We had exposure to the stock market, and budgeting.

My mother would do some home schooling during the summer. She had printed up checks which my sister and I had to write to cover bills.

[Captain Save]

Went to business school .. and they basically get you ready for the corporate business world. Even with that, the best learning experience is when you start working...

But if you're trying to start your own business , your best teacher is not business school.. at least not business school in early to mid 2000s .. (i'm sure there are exceptions to this rule)

If I had to do it all over, I will work for a small business guy in an area I'm intrested in .. I'd even be willing to volunteer. Pair that with some online education in marketing so I can be of value to that business. Learn from his mistakes and successes and try to start my own thing