Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

There is an expression that goes something like this, if I can see father it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. It is meant to encapsulate building off of something that someone else has already done. Taking it a step further.

I have been thinking about this in context to school a lot lately as I close in on the end of my MBA. Sitting in class and at home doing massive computations long hand seems like an incredible waste of time. I understand the need to see the fundamentals but shouldn’t I leverage the shoulders of others who have created things like calculators and Excel? Maybe we waste too much time learning the basics when the basics and how to do them have changed. I realize that you have to learn the basics before you can take the next logical step and learn how to apply the techniques in new ways that might lead to a new break through. But I wonder if there is a better way to do this.