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  • The modern corporation as we know it was first formed in 1602

  • with the government chartered Dutch East India Company.

  • This is kind of the first modern corporation with shareholders and organizations

  • that kind of if you squinted looked like something closed to modern companies today.

  • By the 1850s in the United States with railroads spanning the entire country,

  • corporations needed more sophisticated organizations

  • and the fact the first org chart was drawn in 1856 to just manage corporations

  • and by the beginning of the 20th century, educators started realizing

  • that there was a need for an educated management class to administer and execute these corporations

  • because at least in the United States we were going from local economies to regional economies

  • to a national economy, yet we did not have a trained management class

  • and so in a brilliant insight, Harvard set up the first masters of business administration course

  • called the MBA and the first graduating class in 1910 was the first of a

  • cadre of business administrators that made the 20th century the modern corporate century.

  • The MBA curriculum is designed to provide managers and administrators

  • with the tools they needed to run existing and growing companies.

  • Accounting, strategy, operations, leadership, organizational behavior,

  • human resources management and these stack of tools were just incredibly important

  • for the growth of large companies but what's really interesting what that missed is that

  • they were really no tools provided in this curriculum for starting new businesses.

  • One of the things we did not understand for 100 years

  • is that startups are not smaller versions of large companies.

  • Let me say it again--startups are not smaller versions of large companies

  • and what falls out of that is all the traditional tools taught and learned in an MBA curriculum

  • are irrelevant in the first chaotic year or two of an early stage venture.

  • Eventually, you need that tool set but at first it really gets in the way.

The modern corporation as we know it was first formed in 1602

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