The history of a corporation

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 organizational 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 they were going from local economies to regional economies to a national economy, yet they 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 stacks of tools were just incredibly important for the growth of large companies but what's really interesting that was 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 that 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.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should concentrate on creating a corporation from the start, born from your passion that meet the needs and solve the problem of others. Though you may be small now, you must have that big vision of creating something, an institution that has the foundation and model to solve a very large problem. Some companies will do well solving the problems and meeting the needs of a niche market, but to start your company that will create a legacy, you should create a company that will solve a big aching problem.

So our educational system does not train us to create companies that provide jobs but train us to mass produce employees. Thanks to the internet and many others that are changing the entrepreneurial landscape, we now have a lot of educational portal out there that are focused on training entrepreneurs. So you don’t have a reason anymore not to start your own business.