&gt; My complaint (and I suspect many others&#x27;) is with the idea that someone who has studied the discipline of &quot;business&quot; is qualified to run <i>any</i> business, regardless of what it does.<p>Yes, this is my impression too, having once worked for a CEO whose primary qualification seemed to have been his MBA.  What they taught him seemed to be applicable to running a division of a large company; it seemed anywhere between irrelevant and outright wrong when applied to a software startup.<p>Maybe the efforts of people like Peter Thiel and Steve Blank will help get out the word that managing a startup requires a very different skill set.  In general, it&#x27;s my observation that different kinds of businesses need to be managed very differently.  While there probably are some general principles, I have the impression that business schools underemphasize the variety that&#x27;s out there, and the importance of <i>understanding</i> the business before trying to manage it.