OCTOBER 7, 2014

To master any discipline or topic, a student needs to be invested to excel, coupling some natural ability with genuine drive.

This may be one of the most debated entrepreneurial questions out there, with a lot of varying opinions. Its answer is at the heart of our programs at Acton.

While some suggest that entrepreneurship can only emerge from innate character traits, others (ourselves included) know that the habits and skills for successful entrepreneurship can be developed over time.

At Acton, every year we bring together extraordinary students and three critical ingredients that lay the groundwork for developing the habits, traits, and intuition of a master entrepreneur:

Engaged and driven students:

To master any discipline or topic, a student needs to be invested to excel, coupling some natural ability with genuine drive. While it’s also important that students at the MBA level have solid mathematical skills and the right kind of intelligence, the interest and drive is most important. Just as not every applicant to medical school is accepted, not every smart applicant to Acton makes the cut.

In addition to intelligence, and a sound undergraduate degree, our students must be in pursuit of improvement, learning, and building something great. Without it they won’t make it through the gauntlet.

Experienced and successful entrepreneur teachers:

You wouldn’t want to learn advanced surgical medicine from an instructor who hadn’t successfully completed many surgeries. Learning entrepreneurship from someone who has never successfully built and sold a company makes about as much sense.

At Acton, all our teachers are successful and accomplished entrepreneurs, who have real-life experience to draw from. They are dedicated to asking tough questions and to helping our students grow into successful entrepreneurs who will grow and build their own businesses, while avoiding some of the most painful mistakes that can be made along the way.

A teaching method that ensures you learn by doing:

Entrepreneurship isn’t theory, it’s doing. Many who say entrepreneurship can’t be taught tend to cite this fact as evidence. And when entrepreneurship is taught as theory, as it is in traditional MBA programs, then we agree that it can’t be taught effectively.

Students who study theory don’t build habits and skills. However, at Acton our program is anything but traditional. Every day, our students learn by stepping into the shoes of real-life entrepreneurs, spending hours deliberating over the details of their businesses, analyzing data or the complete lack of it, in order to determine what the next step should be.

They then defend it in class, moderated by our entrepreneur teachers, who use the Socratic Method, asking questions to drive the class discussion forward. There are no lectures here. Only on-the-ground involvement, discussion, debate, and personal experience.

If you’d like to learn more about Acton and how we combine hardworking students with drive and determination and incredibly experienced entrepreneur-teachers for a classroom experience unlike any other, drop us a line or come experience the classroom for yourself.