College students may have a lot of time for light hearted partying but some of them are also spending hours transferring what they learned and experienced in the classroom and on campus and turning that knowledge into a thriving business. Millions of college freshmen will flock to campuses nationwide this month as a new school year gets underway. Inevitably some of them will get lost trying to find the nearest ATM or Post Office or Chinese takeout. Jared Stenquist hopes to help them find their way.Stenquist, a self-taught web developer, started CampusLIVE as a hobby while studying at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst. The site allows students on 18 campuses nationwide, including the University of Connecticut and George Mason University, to locate campus services and local businesses without ever leaving their dorm room. The company became so large and well known that it started attracting advertisers. When the advertisers contacted Stenquist, he took a leave of absence from college to work on the business full time. CampusLIVE now employs five full time staff plus interns and made over $100,000 in gross revenue last year.

Finishing college can reap its benefits too. Carlos Leon graduated from Full Sail University with a bachelor’s degree in film. He took the knowledge gained from that and turned the small multimedia company that he started in his parents mobile home into a full service production company. He now can list clients such as Warner Bros., VH1, Sirius and MTV3. (more…)

Post reproduced from pluGGd.in - written by Sanjay Anandaram…

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games would have just begun by the time this article appears in public. 10,500 athletes will be participating in 28 sports and 302 events for personal and national glory.

The Indian contingent consists of only 57 athletes representing the dreams of a country with over a billion people! With the Indian hockey team failing to qualify for the Olympics for the first time, the Indian contingent will compete in shooting, track and field, boxing, archery, tennis, wrestling, rowing, table tennis and badminton. For the first time, interestingly enough, India’s medal hopes rest not on a team sport like hockey but individual sports like shooting and boxing. Our national game has been reduced to becoming an inconsequential non-entity on the world stage. (more…)

Let’s talk creativity. What do you do when everyone in your profession goes on strike and your find yourself mindlessly walking around, eating all day and becoming really comfortable with daytime TV?Well if you are the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live, you learn from the experience and then you use that experience to do something totally cool. After the now infamous writer’s strike, which occupied much of the fall and winter, the SNL cast has learned how to do more than just be funny. Many former and current SNL members recently got together to spend their summer vacation filming an online miniseries called “The Line”. The series surrounds the stories of those waiting eleven days for a science fiction film premier.The premise is based on the experiences of the actually actors and has attracted a wide array of followers. Done through a very low-stakes medium and distributed on the web, the experience has been a first for both the actors and the production company. By learning from a difficult situation, these actors have found a new way to express their talents. They are also finding a whole new ocean for exploration. Direct to internet series may be the new wave of the future and an option for those unable to get financing for billion dollar pictures or television series. For more information about this, look to our previous post on From Here to Awesome.

Have you recently found yourself in a similar situation? Rather than bemoan the lost time, try to put your creativity to use. In the end, you might just make a fun(ny?) discovery about yourself or your medium

I recently stumbled across this paragraph, in an article about Russian entrepreneurship:

Andrei Sharov, Director of the Department of State Economic Regulation in the Economic Development and Trade Ministry (MERT), suggests that for Russian private business to develop, promotion at various levels is needed. “I recall the results of a sociological study: Whom do Russian women prefer to marry? And entrepreneurs were at the bottom of the list. This is very important. If we don’t change women’s preferences, then I think few people will want to be entrepreneurs,” Sharov joked. Support for entrepreneurship, in his opinion, must be displayed not only in state policy, but also in the family, at all levels of the educational system, and in public opinion.

The article goes on to discuss how cultural differences affect innovation. In particular, Sergey Borisov, President of OPORA Rossii, an all-Russian public organization of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, added, “Russian and American entrepreneurs are alike in some (more…)

While reading a recent Kauffman Foundation report, I was reminded of an amusing, little book entitled, Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson. It is a motivational story about two miniature humans, Hem and Haw, who live in a maze and survive only on cheese. One day, in their typical quest for food, Hem and Haw happen upon a cheese-filled corridor. After setting up camp they soon become content with their find, and establish routines around the supply of cheese. At first they act as if the supply will never run out and are comforted by regularity, since they are afraid of change. When the supply of cheese becomes noticeably smaller, Haw decides to break free from his constrictive mindset and sets out in search for new cheese. Hem remains complacent and fearful of change. Towards the end of the story Haw finds a new supply of cheese and due to his past experience continues to explore the maze, preventing complacency. (more…)

My earlier post concerning the waning fortunes of Yahoo! and, to a lesser extent, Ebay, made me consider the nature of brand loyalty. I say this because, in seeing the Economist claim that “Yahoo! lives, but on the web’s equivalent of life support,” I felt deeply bothered. The more I thought about the article the more uneasy I became. As inconvenient and old as Yahoo! has become compared to Google and other nascent internet companies, I return to, I gravitate toward that cluttered homepage that said article unflatteringly describes as a “tawdry strip mall.”Yahoo! is special and important in a way that can never be replicated by any other internet company. It gave me my first experience with a search engine, my first glimpse of a website back in sweet 1997 when my dad brought home our first clunky PC with Windows 95 and spent hours roaming the World Wide Web. (more…)

“Teenagers are hardwired differently, they want to make a difference and care about the world and their community. They have something unique to offer and they have it now,” said Dr. Susan L. Reid, author, entrepreneur, and business coach during a recent interview about her new book, Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success. She explained that we, as teenagers and young adults, have a sense of ourselves as unique individuals– we are Millennials, a group of youth who value our uniqueness and ability to contribute to and fix the world.

Her book, which offers cogent and inspirational advice for women who are engaging in their first entrepreneurial adventure, is also applicable to youth. (more…)

I recently stumbled across this article by Matt Bandyk of US News and World Report. It was too good not to re-post in its entirety.

Entrepreneurs and Social Responsibility
May 30, 2008 03:27 PM ET | Matthew Bandyk (more…)

A big part of Global Entrepreneurship Week is celebrating innovation. The whole concept of innovation is great. Its about re-imagining, birthing anew and changing the face of things around you. So its really cool to see innovation the size of a billboard, or wait, on a billboard, no there it is below the billboard.

Apparently, billboards are now collecting data about the people who passby. “ (more…)

Since, I started blogging for this site, I find that I read a lot of other people’s blog. I like this one in particular, mainly because reading her blog feels like you are reading a letter from a girlfriend. In that ways its non-threatening, supportive and informative. I also thought I should share this blog post with you all. She lists 20tips for the new entrepreneur but I’m only reprinting 10 for the rest check out her site and see what you can learn!

1. Every night before you go to sleep, write down your To-Do list for the next day. I recommend adding www.netvibes.com as your personalized internet homepage. Not only can you manage your to-do lists, but you can get all your daily news and blog reading done in one place. (see item #7) (more…)