If you do a quick search for “Product Manager” roles on job portals like Indeed. You will find that MBA skills are often sought after.

Below are some examples across Consumer, Enterprise and Hybrid products.

But first, what is an MBA?

MBA stands for Master of Business Administration.

MBAs date back to the turn of the century, when it was invented in the United States (US) to cater the growing need for scientific approaches to business management.

Generally, MBA programs consist of challenging coursework, group work, projects, examinations, and program activities. Some programs for an MBA also allow the option to study abroad.

How does an MBA help in Product Management?

MBA students learn about finance, marketing, operations management, economics, human resource management, strategy and entrepreneurship.

These are essentials topics for starting and running a business – be it selling software, hardware products or services.

Since product managers are often described as the business champions, having these skills are indeed advantageous.

It depends on the type of Product

There are 3 types of products – Consumer (B2C), Enterprise (B2B), Internal (Intranet)

Consumer (B2C) and Enterprise (B2B) product managers typically have MBAs. They are required to come out with business models, strategies, price plans, as well as working with marketing, finance, legal resources to launch products.

For example, while at Bosch Software Innovations, I came out with the concept for selling our IoT suite of services on the Amazon Marketplace. I still remember countless hours spent fine-tuning our strategy with various cross-functional teams in Singapore and Germany, while also making sure Amazon can fulfil our requirements.

Then there are also Product managers working on internal company-wide products such as HR, Finance, Logistic, IT systems. Confusingly, they are sometimes referred as Enterprise Product Managers. In Singapore, I have seen such roles in large banks, and companies like Facebook and Lazada.

It depends if you are a Technical or Business product manager

Technical product managers, unlike their business-savvy counterparts, focus more on behind-the-scenes work with Engineering, QA and Operations. They tend to not develop business models, go-to-market strategies or even conduct user research and analysis.

In this case, an MBA is not really beneficial, as compared to taking the Masters in Computer Science, professional User Design courses, beefing up soft skills (Presentation, Negotiation, Communication, etc).

What if I still want an MBA?

MBAs from famous schools typically cost above SGD 100,000 for a year or two. Examples are from Stanford, Wharton, London School of Business, Insead, etc. If you (or your parents) have the money, i recommend to go for it. Do remember it also takes up 1-2 years of your life, for the full-time commitment.

Other than the class-room lessons, you will gain valuable personal connections with likely-to-be future business leaders, as well as valuable alumni associations.

Prestige and branding always helps. If given a choice, I recommend you go big or don’t do an MBA at all.