As it turns out, building a startup business from the ground up is actually very simple. Step 1: build the entire startup. Step 2: make money. That’s all there is to it. You only need intense dedication, creativity, vision, motivation, discipline, tenacity, failure, and many more words that summarize similar things. Over the course of… Continue reading Innovation: Not Just for Work or Class
Chase Rickaby grew up in Nelson, British Columbia, and by the age of 16 he had discovered a passion for photography and content creation. After college, he spent some years doing outreach work in Calgary. While creative work was always a hobby, it became a sort of part-time job as Tamarack Media Co. alongside his full-time… Continue reading Hard Work and Authenticity – a Q&A with Chase Rickaby
In class, we’ve talked about developing ideas and looking for specific problems that we see are ripe for an innovative solution. It’s a glamorous image to have the breakaway idea that takes the world by storm. However, we learn something very important from Brian Chesky and Reid Hoffman in Hoffman’s first episode of his Masters… Continue reading Fostering Innovation from Startup to Global Business
Peter Shankman held a Skype conference with our class because he knows we’ve got a room full of the smartest, most intelligent, and most driven university students on the face of the planet. Our class is a select group of entrepreneurial students with the guts and gumption to build businesses to take over the world.… Continue reading Entrepreneurship Lessons from Peter Shankman
As we develop startup ideas in class on how to innovate and redesign campus news media, our job is to look at target markets and target audiences for the solutions we come up with. Part of the way we can become disruptors in news media and news media distribution is, as the name suggests, changing… Continue reading Thoughts on Funding Local News
It’s the great Coney Quest! Before starting our own Coney Island that puts all other Coney Island restaurants out of business, we toured three different Coneys in East Lansing to get a feel for competitive analysis. We’re not really going to start a Coney Island restaurant. However, in learning about the process of entrepreneurship and… Continue reading The Great Coney Quest: Discovering How a Coney Survives in a Crowded Market
Most businesses take years to establish themselves in an industry — if they ever even manage it. A few inspiring cases of companies going from dream to reality in six months are out there, and those generally have a few things in common. The classic why-didn’t-I-think-of-that cliche of creative problem solving certainly exists, but a… Continue reading Planning Your Business: Thoughts on Competitive Analysis
If you want to learn how to launch a news media startup, all you have to do is read this article by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. You’ll be all set. I’m kidding. But chapter three is a good starting point. And fortunately, it’s useful for more than just digital media entrepreneurs because it looks at… Continue reading Taking Digital Media and Startups to the Next Level
The hustle. The grind. Call it what you want. Social media, narcissistic vloggers, the Internet marketplace and slang terminology can all be inspirational. Who doesn’t want to feel like they own the world and can make money any way they want? The rags-to-riches, self-made, American Dream(ing) persona no doubt has its appeal. We’ve see this… Continue reading Building a Startup: Who Do You Think You Are?
Amazon may be trying to monopolize the material world, but it looks like Facebook is on track to take over the digital world. To my surprise, Google advertising revenue has dropped slightly for 2016 while Facebook’s has grown by 5% each year since 2015, according to the Pew Research Center’s report on the State of… Continue reading Facebook vs. The World and the Future of Media
Spartans Innovate 