It's time to take the "A" out of MBA. Venture Mode is a bold call for an overhaul of modern business leadership and the higher education system that staffs it. It exposes the bureaucratic mindset that dominates modern organizations—especially universities—and explains the true cost of our obsession with administration in the form of suppressed economic potential. In its place, Hunter Hastings and Mark Packard champion venture mode: a radical, entrepreneurial approach that prioritizes value creation, consumer sovereignty, and agile execution. Venture Mode takes aim at traditional bureaucratic management and makes the case for a new kind of leadership—entrepreneurial leadership—that’s built to drive growth, unleash creativity, and outpace competitors. Drawing from both entrepreneurial (Austrian) economics and the experiences of inspiring modern business leaders, the authors lay out a provocative road map to escape the administration trap and rebuild organizations around the principles of value creation. They also outline a vision for business education that replaces the ubiquitous MBA with the MBE—master of business enterprise—to ensure that the next generation is trained in entrepreneurial leadership instead of administration. Whether you’re a founder, an executive, or a rebel within a legacy system, this book is a call to arms. If you’re tired of the inertia of traditional business thinking and its MBA-fueled administrative mindset, then Venture Mode is your new manual—showing you how to train, nurture, and unleash entrepreneurial leaders to fuel a thriving business. The world doesn’t need more administrators. It needs entrepreneurs. “Business schools are failing students. They focus on administration, HR, accounting, and cost. They portray value as something managers magically add, like a markup on a widget. And they produce graduates mired in stale bureaucratic thinking. Venture Mode is the antidote. As its capable authors make clear, business needs more value creators and fewer managers. Value is not the mysterious byproduct of rigid processes—it’s the starting point and critical focus. Smart businesses relentlessly seek to understand the consumer’s experience and work backward. The book lays out the critical principles every business needs to move away from bureaucracy and toward value creation. It’s an eye-opening expose of what’s wrong with the MBA factories. It’s a clarion call for a new way of thinking about business. More than anything, Venture Mode is the mindset shift every entrepreneur needs for the twenty-first century.” —Jeff Deist, general counsel, Monetary Metals & Co.; former president, Mises Institute " Venture Mode offers an entrepreneurial approach to business education that applies intense focus to customer needs, empathetic innovation, subjective value, entrepreneurial action, and networks. Its original perspective highlights how traditional thinking has ill-equipped leaders for today’s dynamic markets, where value creation drives thriving. By demanding an educational approach that nurtures empathy, ingenuity, judgment, and tenacity, business schools can help unleash entrepreneurial leaders. Venture Mode offers three novel elements to the ongoing rethinking of management: 1. Education based on providing a true understanding of the drivers of innovative value creation and generative market shifts. 2. Experiential learning rather than classrooms and textbooks. 3. A business model in which the hiring party is the customer. Venture Mode is a revolutionary alternative to current models of business education, rooted in the entrepreneurial pursuit of new value creation.” —Stephen Denning, former World Bank executive, Forbes senior contributor, and author of The Age of Agile “ Venture Mode is a striking rethink of business education brimming with creative insight. Hunter Hastings and Mark Packard reveal how “administrative mode” has suffocated innovation. Their proposal is fresh, entrepreneurial, and rooted in value creation. The authors’ thoughtful framework transforms how we think about leadership and learning. The book provides a blueprint for the future of business . . . so needed for today’s dynamic markets.” —Dennis Lopez, CEO, Global Real Estate Company “The MBA may be the gold standard in business credentials—but is it gold-plated nonsense? In Venture Mode , Hastings and Packard argue it’s not just overrated—it’s counterproductive. The problem lies in the ‘A’ for administration, which suffocates the ‘B’ for business. Instead of fostering value creation and customer focus, the MBA mindset breeds bureaucracy, control, and rigid routines. Managers are trained like battlefield generals, not builders of innovation. Business schools teach command and compliance, not creativity. What’s lost? The entrepreneur—the true engine of the market—who thrives by serving, not scheming.” —Per Bylund, PhD, associate professor of entrepreneurship and Johnny D. Pope Chair, Spears School