Can an MBA college enable you to transform a lightbulb moment into a business idea?
The citizens of ancient Syracuse may have been surprised to see a man run past them naked, dripping, and shouting, “Eureka!” which means that he had found it. The person who ran naked was Archimedes – a very celebrated mathematician, scientist, and inventor, who was known to be the king’s confidant.
He seemed to have discovered the ‘principle of buoyancy’. He was so deeply focused on the problem that he just forgot everything about his surroundings while being at the zenith of joy. We call it a Eureka moment or a ‘Lightbulb’ moment.
What do we not know about Lightbulb moments?
A lightbulb moment is celebrated, written about, and read for centuries as we have seen above with Archimedes. However, a lightbulb moment occurs when one is deeply immersed and focused on a mission or a goal – for weeks, months, or even years together. You have to be devoted to the mission for a long period of time to discover the Eureka or the lightbulb moment.
Lightbulb moments may happen anywhere and not necessarily in the labs or a controlled environment that you may be working in. When the apple fell on Newton’s head, he wasn’t in his lab, right?
What’s the genesis of a great business idea?
If you read about great businesses and entrepreneurs, they will tell you that they may have pondered about a problem for long, and then a ‘lightbulb’ moment gave them the confidence to take the leap of faith.
However, between the ‘lightbulb’ moment (business idea) to creating a sustainable venture that will significantly impact lives is a long and arduous journey.
How can one transform a ‘lightbulb’ moment into a profitable business?
Almost all of us may have had ‘lightbulb’ moments at some point of time in our lives. However, pursuing it relentlessly to build a business is not everyone’s cup of tea. While some may have the entrepreneurial zeal and courage to keep going, the entrepreneurial spirit by itself may still not be enough.
It requires a clear ecosystem around the idea to enable the founders (or entrepreneurs) to transform the idea into a sustainable business.
The role of management colleges and start-up incubators
No one can stop an idea whose time has come. We have all heard that and know that. However, it is important to take note of well-experienced educational institutes and incubation centers that accelerate the journey of transforming ideas to realization.
An engineering or management college is often the place of birth of many ideas. There are a number of well-covered stories in the media about entrepreneurs who built businesses out of an engineering college or a management college.
It comes as no surprise then that many of these colleges have in-house start-up incubators to enable their students to capitalize on their lightbulb moments and convert them to sustainable business ventures by providing them with tools, resources, network, connections and mentors.
What are the resources that these colleges provide to empower ‘lightbulb’ moments?
“Ideas are no one’s monopoly”, said visionary business leader Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance industries. It is also true that it is not directly correlated to your age or experience. It is why some of the most innovative companies of today have come from dorm rooms of colleges when founders were in their late teens or their early twenties.
However, that is more of an exception than a rule. A young bright person may have many ‘lightbulb’ moments but may not necessarily know how to structure them for transformation into a business or a company.
That’s exactly where some reputed colleges and their incubation centers step in. The resources that they might offer are as below: –
- Well-connected Digital Labs – A ‘lightbulb’ moment is important but it is just the beginning. There is a need for resources so that one can research further, build on the idea, file for patents, own the IP, and create a scalable business from it. Such innovation would need access to resources that help them to stay connected with the best insights in the world. A reputed management college may provide students with such labs to work on their ‘lightbulb’ moments. For example: – At N. L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies and Research, the students can make use of an always open state-of-the-art digital lab which can accelerate their research and enable them to convert their ‘lightbulb’ moment into a prototype/ initial outline/ business plan in no time. It is just the thrust that a ‘lightbulb’ moment needs to get off the ground.
- Experienced Mentors – You may need to vet your ‘lightbulb’ moment. It must be run through eminent professionals with great experience and expertise in these fields. A PGDM college with the best professors across subjects ensures that you have access to the best in the business and their extended network would help you to connect with the best in the industry. This connect with mentors is invaluable at an early stage and is often the key differentiator between a successful start-up and one that failed to take off.
- Testing Ideas – Colleges often have the resources or facilities that can help you to test an idea. An engineering college may enable you with the resources and facilities to build and execute pilot products/ projects. A management college may help you to validate models and ideas that you may have built to give you the confidence required for it to scale. At N. L. Dalmia Institute of Management Studies and Research (NLDIMSR), the students are empowered with Asia’s largest Bloomberg Lab which has 24 Bloomberg terminals. If your ‘lightbulb’ moment is in the field of finance or financial markets, there probably won’t be a better test space for you than such a lab.
- Finding Co-Founders – If you ask venture capitalists about their investment decisions, one of the common ones that you will find is that the founders are very compatible with each other and their skills were complementary. If founders know each other well, it is always an added advantage. If you start from a management college and your founders are from the same batch or same college, it is an added advantage in terms of enabling you to secure capital or initial funding to get the venture off the ground.
- Capital or funding – Once you have a ‘lightbulb’ moment, you may need seed capital to get it up and running. A good word from your college and your affiliation with its brand is very useful in helping you with the initial funding. Only if you have the initial funding will you be able to transform the ‘lightbulb’ moment into a business.
- Global Pilots – When a ‘lightbulb’ occurs, you may dream of making it a global business venture. An MBA college, especially one that offers Global MBA Programs, can be very useful in such an endeavour. At NLDIMSR, the Global MBA Program offers its first/ foundation year in the Mumbai campus of the college. The second year is conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (UW-Parkside), USA. This enables you to meet students from different countries and cultures. It may help you to test your ‘lightbulb’ moment across cultures and strengthen your belief in making it a global business.
- Business Plan creation – A business plan is the ‘preamble’ for your business success. A good MBA institute will enable you to convert a ‘lightbulb’ moment into a business plan – a very critical step in the journey.
Wrapping Up
A ‘lightbulb’ moment to a sustainable business is a very significant and difficult journey. If it weren’t, there would have had more than 4 billion entrepreneurs in the world. (that’s the world population aged 20-60 years old).
Hence, it is very important for countries to build institutions and incubation centres that can tap into the ‘lightbulb’ moments and convert as many of them into entrepreneurial ventures or start-ups as possible.
An MBA college can offer the resources, pilot test environments, peer groups, mentors, advisors, and networks for funding such enterprises and enabling them to begin their journeys. So, if you are at an MBA institute such as NLDIMSR, do not let your ‘lightbulb’ moments go waste. Transform them into a great business and let it be your first and last job! There is no greater joy than building a venture and creating an enterprise!
