MIT is planning to launch a student-led online publication focused on entrepreneurship by the end of the year, a leader of the effort tells Xconomy. The fledgling publication will be called the MIT Entrepreneurship Review (MITER) and will aim to serve as a resource for entrepreneurs and to raise the already high profile of the prestigious school in the business world.
The publication is being organized much like a law review, seeking student editors, based on merit, to provide editorial content, said Eduard Viladesau, a graduate student at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who is one of the founders of MITER. The plan is to have weekly columns that focus on entrepreneurship issues in the energy, life sciences, and IT sectors. The publication’s editorial review board currently consists of several MIT faculty members such as Bob Langer and Michael Cima who have experience in inventing technologies and founding numerous startups. (Our own Bob has also agreed to serve as an advisor to MITER.) It’s also expected that other entrepreneurs and business leaders who are affiliated with MIT will contribute articles to the publication.
While academic publications such as the Harvard Business Review cover entrepreneurship as well as other business issues, Viladesau said, the MIT Entrepreneurship Review plans to have an exclusive focus on entrepreneurship. The content of the online publication—which will include case studies, startup profiles, and analyses of major trends or problems facing entrepreneurs—is expected to be more technical and analytical than, say, stories in the popular press. But the articles will not be peer-reviewed or as elaborate as those found in a traditional academic journal. The Web-based publication will be available for free on the public Internet.
“We have three main missions,” Viladesau said. “One is to build and promote the thought-leadership brand of MIT.” The other two goals of the publication are to serve as a resource to entrepreneurs and to attract top students to the school.
The concept of a Web-based and student-run entrepreneurship publication was previously adopted at Stanford University. Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner, or ECorner, is a free online publication that features videos, podcasts, and written resources for entrepreneurs. Viladesau told me that MITER will initially have mostly written articles, but future plans include videos and other multimedia offerings like those found at ECorner.
Viladesau told me that the idea to found the publication came from Bill Aulet, acting director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center (and an Xconomist), who recruited Viladesau to help transform the idea into reality. Aulet is now advising Viladesau and two other Sloan students who are managing the development of the publication. (MIT professor Ed Roberts, the chairman and founder of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, is on the editorial advisory board of MITER.) The group is expected to hold a competition to select student editors for the publication, and each of them will receive a $1,000 cash prize for winning a slot on the editorial team. The publication could launch as early as November.
