Back around the 1920’s, Universities rose to the challenge of the new industrialized era by starting to churn out MBA faster than you can say assembly line. For nearly a hundred years, MBA’s have ruled the corporate roost, strutting their knowledge of organizational behavior, finance, operations and in general how the real world of real business really worked.

Now, for most people who live, play, find mates, make dates and above all work on the Internet, the usual MBA fare is about as appealing as courses on applied hieroglyphics, mule train operations and case studies of rise of Enron.

When are these colleges and universities going to get with the times and start teaching what we need? Do away with the old MBA: what we need is a Masters in Business Attention degree program:

Here’s some of the courses I’d shell out money to take online:

• Attention Investing 101. The fundamentals of investing attention in an economy predicated on never ending supply abundance of choice. Students will learn proven strategies for investing attention, including how to apply the Dunbar limit to social networks, the transitive marginal costs of spam and best strategies for balancing an attention portfolio.
• Organizational Behavior of blogs (a.k.a. “Herding cats for fun and profit”). Students will learn new and exciting ways of creating blog buzz, instigating blog swarm attacks, and the proper care and feeding of business bloggers.
• Controlled Web Surfing. In this class, students will be taught the secret of not spending most of their working day bouncing from site to site. (Note: since electroshock therapy is used, students under the age of 21 will need a note from their parents.)
• Information Technology Management. How to manage a neverending barrage of security/anti-virus updates to allow at least a quarter of your time for actual work. (Note: Students using Apple computers do not need to take this class.)

One last note on a serious note before I go partake in a cultlike activity stand in line to get my copy of Apple Leopard: Our schools - from Kindergarten to Master’s Degree - need to get with the times and start teaching the skills we in the Digital World need.

Bob Walsh runs a consulting firm for microISVs and startup software companies at 47hats.com, authored Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality and Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them and is currently working on a secret project.

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