Get advice for creating a new product and launching your idea. Our authors are faculty, staff, students and professionals. Read what lessons they can share about ideation, prototyping, company formation, law, marketing and more.
You think you’re ready to start a company and want to know what you should do first. To borrow the phrase made famous by Nike, Just Do It. At the beginning of a new business, you have a spark of imagination or something you’ve been working on for a while. At some point, you decide […]
Accelerators come in all shapes and sizes: a ranch-style house in Silicon Valley, a formal program with fancy hotel rooms, professional coaches or, most commonly, co-working spaces with mentorship programs that provide small amounts of cash to build your business. Accelerators are not for everyone, and you should make sure the one you’re considering is […]
How many acronyms, charts and consultations have you gone through just trying to find the right marketing strategy? While it is true that every product and business needs an individualized approach, there are some universal truths that pop up in every marketing campaign. Tyler Tate, marketing expert (see some of his work at tsquaredsports.com), offers […]
Money managed well makes for a well-managed company. Hiring a bookkeeper or financial assistant may not be feasible for your business right now, but that does not mean that responsible and effective accounting principles cannot be implemented to help run your business. Though a seemingly daunting task, Matt Orton, CPA and senior tax manager at […]
There is a fine line between prototypes and final products … or is there? Time, money and public appeal shape the creation of a new product and are constantly evolving, making the time at which a product hits the market critical to its success. Kyle Muir exemplifies this concept with Apple: the iPhone generations have […]
The United States ranks No. 1 out of 138 countries as the best environment in the world for being an entrepreneur according to GEDI’s 2017 study. CNN and the Kauffman Foundation report that hundreds of thousands of new companies are started each year and approximately 6 percent of U.S. adults claim entrepreneurship as their main source […]
So you have your idea, product or service ready to bring to market, but you don’t know how to navigate the legal world. Almost everyone has heard the words “trademark,” “patent” and “copyright,” but few know what they mean or how they will function within their startup. It will be necessary for you, the entrepreneur, […]
For the first time ever, you are ready to hire at your startup. You have revenue, or maybe you raised some funding. Now, you need some additional hands to get things done. That’s great! Right? Now look, I am not claiming to be an expert in hiring. But, I definitely made some mistakes that I […]
As a student and an entrepreneur, I tend to ask a lot of my mind. If you are a typical example of either of those things, I imagine you do the same. Whether you are cramming for test after test, or waiting on that next brilliant idea for a startup, your mind is very much […]
A prototype is more than just a shiny, new piece of technology — it’s a methodology. Every entrepreneur will prototype their product or service, but only some go through this process effectively. Blake Wigdahl knows this process well. As the vice president of design and business development at Western Architectural, he has led many […]
