How Can MBA Degree Holders Take On the Free Web

Craigslist.org is an MBA degree holder nightmare. Here is an exceedingly popular Web site that offers volumes of classified listings for scores of local markets. The only time craigslist.org charges for anything is to weed out profit seekers like real-estate brokers and employment agencies.

How do you compete with a company like that, one that is working purely for the love of the job? It's not easy.

MBA's Confront Web Egalitarianism

Sites like craigslist.org proliferate specifically because of their egalitarianism. All you have to do is visit the Web site and two clicks later you're a member (or a message poster, or an advertiser).

A New York Times article calls this branch of Web development "purpose driven media," companies that are driven by a calling and not the almighty dollar. And the examples are legion.
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Free Firefox Equals Microsoft Headache

Take Firefox, Mozilla's ubiquitous Web browser that gives Microsoft Explorer developers an ever-worsening headache. How can a MBA degree holder working at Microsoft strategize a way to not only make money, but also match Mozilla's homespun egalitarianism?
v The answer, for a while at least, was Google. When Google was rising, its moniker was to "first do no evil" and it hissed at MBA types that might want to influence its direction. The world at large sensed egalitarianism and searched away so devotedly on Google that it became its own verb.

Google Finally Goes MBA, Say Critics

Then Google went public (still defying MBA know-it-alls while doing it), and ever since, its reputation for Craigslist-like egalitarianism has faded. Recent news that Google will indeed cooperate with the Chinese Communist party (but not the U.S. Justice Department) has not helped matters. Doing no evil, to many, is no longer the case.

And that's the major issue for MBA degree holders who enter the Web world. How do you grow like any business should, but not affect your egalitarian image. So far the folks at craigslist.org are refusing to offer an answer, or hire an MBA to help them do it.

Sources
New York Times