Dean says entrepreneurship in Kingston Business School's DNA as QS TopMBA.com rates it number one in world for MBA graduate start-ups

Posted Friday 1 December 2017

Kingston Business School's longstanding focus on enterprise and innovation has seen it top a global table for producing the highest proportion of MBA graduates to have launched their own companies, according to figures published in a QS TopMBA.com Return on Investment Report.

The report consisted of information from business schools in more than 30 countries. Leading business intelligence agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) found Kingston Business School's MBA graduates to be the most entrepreneurial in the world with 33 per cent starting up their own ventures. The agency's return on investment report forms part of the new QS Global MBA Rankings unveiled this week.

Dean of Kingston Business School Professor Ron Tuninga said the school's staff were immensely proud of their enterprising MBA graduates. "Entrepreneurship is in our DNA – we aim to instil an entrepreneurial mind-set in all students from when they come in the door as first year undergraduates right up to the day they achieve their degrees and diplomas," he said. "In the current climate it is imperative that our students realise they don't have to limit themselves to be job-seekers and that with some innovation, they can be their own job creators."

MBA course director Dr Kent Springdal said he believed the graduates' achievements could be attributed to the Business School's teaching approach. "Assisting students to acquire the skills needed to run a new business has been an integral component of the MBA programme since its launch 30 years ago," he said. "We bring real practitioners in to our teaching rooms alongside academics carrying out active research in this field. This stimulates our students' business flair by giving them the chance to have their ideas assessed and to receive constructive feedback from entrepreneurs who are currently flourishing in the business world."

The MBA course cohort also benefitted from liaising with the University's Small Business Research Centre – recognised as one of the country's leading groups in the field of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) research, Dr Springdal said. "This creates an entrepreneurial environment for our MBA students from day one," he added. "Committing to an MBA is a huge decision but by encouraging our students to take control of their own careers, we believe the Kingston Business School MBA fundamentally changes lives."

MBA graduate Ashley Nicholls, who launched her own recruitment company, The Recruitment Site Limited in 2012, is one of the school's success stories. Recognising that she would need to hone her own skillset if she was to expand her business further, Ashley signed up for the Executive MBA programme at Kingston University's Business School and said the part-time course allowed her to continue to run her business whilst studying.

"I heard about Kingston MBA's impressive reputation for entrepreneurship from a number of senior candidates and clients who had also completed the course," the managing director, whose business is based in Central London, said. "The MBA went above and beyond my expectations providing me with great insight in to how I could grow my company and equipping me with the tools to do that. It was particularly helpful to meet other entrepreneurs and business leaders to learn from their experiences and to see how I could replicate their accomplishments."

Return on investment was just one of the indicators used to rate universities within the overall QS Global MBA Rankings. Kingston Business School also featured prominently against a number of other measures. Based on gender and international representation among students and academic staff its MBA has been ranked second in the world for diversity and in the top 50 MBA programmes overall in Europe. It has also been ranked number 50 in Europe for thought leadership.