Executive MBA programs are gaining stature every year. Many of the country’s best B-schools now offer programs structured for students well into the workforce and with life situations that preclude leaving work and family obligations for two years of full-time study. It’s a wonderful time to be in the position to further one’s education and obtain an MBA. However, with an average cost of around $47,000 and a commitment to two years of nights and/or weekends, an executive MBA program is still out of the reach of most aspirants.

“You dropped 150 grand on a f****** education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!” - Good Will Hunting

For considerably less cost is an attempt to obtain the equivalent knowledge through books. There’s even a surprisingly well-organized attempt to define a personal MBA. It would seem that with the volume of business books available one could easily access the best current thinking on economics, marketing, sales, creativity, leadership, and management while sipping a latte at Barnes & Noble. But there’s something missing in that equation – the classroom experience. And that leads me to the missing link between business books and an MBA.

At its core, higher education is less about learning than about how to learn. And an effective MBA will be less about core business fundamentals than about the collaborative learning environment during the program. So here’s the opening, the opportunity. How can one get the shared sense of accomplishment, of dedication to task, of focus on a goal without the motivator of a large tuition payment? And most importantly how can one collaborate with a group of similarly motivated individuals so that their shared experience is the real accomplishment?

Somewhere between that $1.50 at the library and the $47,000 to a B-school is a huge opportunity.

I feel that I get better customer service from American Express. Do I actually? I don’t know, but it seems that way to me and that makes a difference. In fact I didn’t just say that that I had an American Express card, or that I used one. I called myself a member. Think about the power of that. How many other products elicit feelings of membership by their users?

Of course my anecdote doesn’t mean much in the big picture but I think that the U.S. automakers don’t have an image problem as much as they have a perception problem. Namely many U.S. consumers perceive that there is a tangible reason to “buy American” and may be causing more harm than good. A customer market defined by dogmatic allegiance gives us today’s General Motors in the same way it gives us the Chicago Bears. Both perennial underperformers who can sell to the faithful with the fear of what might happen if they don’t buy. A season ticket holder in football country (Chicago, Green Bay, etc.) doesn’t want to give up a coveted spot after a string of losing seasons because he then won’t have it when they start winning. The Buy American crowd won’t buy a Toyota made in Kentucky by American workers because they fear the profit is going overseas and taking jobs with it. So they buy a Ford with a Mazda engine. Or a Cadillac made in Canada.

The essence of a car being American or not is really about jobs. American buyers want to use the power of the wallet in a way they feel is best for the U.S. economy in terms of supporting American jobs. To the extent those buyers view cars as a tangible object that’s bought fully-formed, that image problem is causing tremendous economic waste. Here’s why. Cars are of course a physical object but also are the end result of a long design and development process, a complex global supply chain, and a massive distribution network. At every step of every one of those processes there are jobs. We can easily picture the auto-worker on the assembly line and we may have a strong union orientation, but the bulk of the jobs created by the automotive industry are outside of the manufacturing plant. Americans are employed in car dealerships, advertising agencies, repair shops, and car washes. And those jobs are the same whether the car is a Ford or a Honda or a Pontiac or a BMW.

Truly efficient markets with frictionless substitution will deliver better products at better value. When personal bias or politics props up an inferior product or manufacturer it masks the competitive threat until it is too late for that manufacturer to adapt. It’s like the tectonic plates under an earthquake fault trying to slide but building up pressure. The result can be devastating. The industry suffered one massive quake in the 1970s – are American consumers building up the friction to cause another one?

There are no links on the page to the actual service so I’ll just do a search. That’s a little inconvenient for me, the potential customer, but maybe it’s a great deal. It must be a really good deal if Microsoft is making me work for it.

OK, a Google search for “Hotmail Plus” does not turn up relevant results for the service itself near the top. But there is a paid listing at the right for Hotmail Plus. If I click that link I get taken to the main (free) Hotmail sign up page. Nothing about the premium service, the Hotmail Plus service that I am looking for. I’ll just dig in and check it out a little bit by clicking on the red button with an arrow that says “Get if free.” Oh, wait, that’s just a graphic that looks exactly like a button one would click to move forward in the sign-up or information gathering process. It’s a big red button with a right facing arrow. Fortunately for me, that patient user, there is an identical button below that actually is a link to move forward. Of course.

Now I am fully into the signup process for a regular Hotmail account. That’s funny, I clicked on a sponsored link that said “Hotmail Plus” that appeared when I searched for Hotmail Plus. But I am taking right into the sign up process for a different service. There’s no obvious mention of the premium service I was looking for.

So Microsoft is paying for my attention by buying a search term for a premium product. Then they are using that purchased attention to lead me to something I didn’t want, that’s free when I was willing to pay, and using a broken user interface.

Disaster.

In another medium, CNN may be acknowledging that cable news channels have cluttered interfaces by stripping down the look of CNNi, their international channel.  Hey, MSNBC, you want to differentiate yourself from CNN and Fox News?  Here’s an opportunity to offer a clean look and say to your customers that you won’t insult them with constant onscreen motion and clutter.