Race on Sunday, Sell on Monday

Last Thursday, in both of my ENTR200 classes, teams of their own choosing made presentations on Telsa Motors, the relatively new California-based electric car company. In the 9am class in particular, great interest was generated and questions asked by the class. Good job Team 5!

In racing, there is an old saying, “Race on Sunday and sell on Monday.” The thought being, that technology developed on the race track makes its way into future automobiles to the benefit of everybody. Guess what? This is still taking place as we speak only this time, in hybrid-electric technology. It is understandable that race cars need to go as far as possible as fast as possible. This means, among many other things, keeping out of the pits where you’re not going anywhere for as long as possible.

Braking turns the energy of forward motion into heat which is dissipated via the braking system’s pads and rotors, cooled by air ducted over the pad/rotor contact area. Such heat cycling takes place in every instance that brakes are applied for whatever reason – corner, to avoid a collision, or fear. This heat represents wasted energy. Now, Formula One cars, and ALMS, are using something called the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) that converts this wasted energy into useable electrical energy which is stored, in the case of Steve Pruitt’s GZ09-SH car pictured above, in a 70-pound battery in an extremely efficient manner.

In Pruitt’s case, engineers have calculated at least one less pit stop which normally last from 14 seconds to one minute per race which equates to a massive advantage. While the Prius and other puddle-jumpers are using the same principles, none in general use will be honed to a fine edge like those used where every watt counts, on the race track. Oh, and another thing, the first hybrid-electric car involved in racing was in 1998  when Panoz put “Sparky” on the track and took a second place finish. Panoz BTW, is also a U.S. car company. Hank

Spoof of CNN’s iPhone App for traffic reporting

If You Really Want 2 Start A Company, Watch This – Mint Founder Aaron Patzer

Internship Opportunity Knocks….

Internship opportunity for Marketing students

Sharon Baumeyer [sharon.thoughts@gmail.com]

Sent:
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 9:48 AM

To:

Feeser, Henry R; ikwon@purdue.edu; Liu, Qiang; Robinson, William T; Shin, Sang Woo

Attachments:

Hello:
I am the Campus Marketing Manager for thoughts.com and want to offer students of PU an internship opportunity. This is for the spring term and I am looking for two students to intern for thoughts.com. Pass along this information onto your students as I am looking for students that only attend PU. To apply, have them email their resumes to sharon.thoughts@gmail.com. Feel free to email this to students and other communication professors.
Best Regards,
Sharon Baumeyer
Campus Marketing Manager
407.217.1997 EXT 2813
Sharon.thoughts@gmail.com

Thoughts.com is looking for brand ambassadors to spread awareness in the spring about thoughts.com at PU to encourage students to get involved in their community.

Interns will:

• Run their own campaigns at their university
• Come up with their own unique creative ideas
• Execute all ideas
• Promote good causes
• Volunteer in their community

Thoughts.com will provide everything needed to make your event a success but you know your university the best so the rest is up to you. Thoughts.com is looking forward to a successful semester and cannot wait to meet you! Imagine interviewing for your first job out of college and having already run, produced and promoted your own events for good causes! Your ideas essentially come to life and will be rewarded by thoughts.com and the job world outside of college.

This internship offers:

• University credit from PU
• Flexible schedule with other classes
• Monthly gift card from (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Long Horn Steak House, Bahama Breeze, The Capital Grille or Season 22)
• Completion letter at the end of the internship to save for your resume.
• Completion of this internship could lead to being hired on to the team at thoughts.com

We are looking for an intern with passion, enthusiasm and can meet these requirements below:

Requirements: (All requirements are split between two interns)

• Commit 10-12 hours per week
• Digital camera
• Computer access
• Must be a student of PU in the spring of 2010
• Have fun

To apply please email resumes to sharon.thoughts@gmail.com

Paging and Bottom Toolbar

Have A Happy Friday: Some Cool Technology

What To Wear iPhone App

Leena Rao on Techcrunch yesterday said: “Interactive fashion community StyleCaster has launched an iPhone app that answers the age-old questions that many women (and men) ask themselves when they wake up in the morning: “What’s the weather outside?” and “What should I wear?” StyleCaster’s free iPhone app pulls in a weather feed and will give you the recommendations of styled “looks” based on your current location and weather conditions……”

For grins I downloaded and installed the app to show my wife. She didn’t have much to say about the app one way or the other. She’s like that the first couple of hours after being resurrected from sound sleep

BTW, Stylecaster is all over YouTube. It’s obvious they are using free video marketing big time. I added to the fray with the demo video below. In its own way, Stylecaster is cool! Hank

Reclaimed, Recycled, and Reissued clothing

There once was a clothing line called Fitigues. Imagine comfy, upscale, casual thermal cotton knits for men, women and children as a hip alternative to sweats. The original line consisted of an oversized polo shirt, a button up henley, a legging and a pull-on pant which later grew to include leather, cashmere, wool and stretch french terry fabrications. The line was the brainchild of newly married Chicago sales reps Steve and Andi Rosenstein. At just twenty something, working hard and trying to make a buck in their tiny Chicago Apparel Center showroom, they dreamed of starting their own clothing line. After brainstorming a few ideas, Fitigues was born in 1988. Steve and Andi, even after having a difficult time getting a bank loan for their new idea, were able to grow their company to a retail chain of 30 stores, a mail order catalog and a web site in less than 10 years. Sales approached 30 million dollars before the economy began to take a bite in 2001. While Fitigues sales continued to dive, Steve and Andi were fortunate to sell their company to Chico’s, a ladies clothing chain, for $10 million in 2006. Chico’s, thinking they had made a good deal, ended up closing all of the Fitigues stores after only 13 month’s.

Steve and Andi, now both in their late forties and parents of two teen boys, are at it again after only 3 years of downtime. They launched a new clothing line this year called R & R Surplus. The web based company’s focus is on Reclaimed, Recycled, and Reissued clothing with a vintage military twist. Even after experiencing the painful end of their first business, Steve and Andi are willing to give entrepreneurship another try. Will their past experience and creative vision help them create another multi-million dollar company? Check it out here: http://www.randrsurplus.com/ and tell us what you think.

Steve and Andi might just read your comments! by Beth with Hank’s THANKS!

Sramana Mitra’s mentoring roundtable for entrepreneurs 10-7

i received the following email yesterday, 10/5/09. Interesting especially for students of entrepreneurship. Hank

mkelly@bizbookpr.com [mkelly@bizbookpr.com]

Sent:
Sunday, October 04, 2009 10:26 PM

To:

mkelly@bizbookpr.com

Attachments:

I’ve attached below the details for Sramana Mitra’s upcoming Positioning Roundtable on this Wednesday, 10/7 at 10am PT including the link to the registration page below and here.  Sramana offers these webinars for free to help aspiring entrepreneurs further develop their business ideas.  I hope you will share this with any entrepreneurs, groups, students and colleagues in your circle who may be interested. 

And here’s her recent column for Forbes, The Education Solution.

Thanks very much for your continued support!

Kind regards,
Maureen Kelly

908 953 0602

mkelly@bizbookpr.com

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

To help early stage entrepreneurs develop their business ideas, Sramana Mitra is offering a series of free, online Positioning Roundtables.  Entrepreneurs can participate from anywhere by computer or phone and there will be a live, interactive chat throughout the webinar.  The next event will take place on:

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 10:00 am PT (1:00 pm EST/10:30 pm IST)

During this 60-minute session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana their business ideas in a 3-minute presentation. She will review the material in real-time and provide feedback on each pitch, as well as address specific positioning questions from the entrepreneur. Afterwards, she will take questions about positioning from other participants.  The session is open to 1,000 people to attend, but only the first five who sign up to pitch Sramana will have the opportunity to discuss their businesses.
Everyone is welcome to attend.  Register now at http://www.sramanamitra.com/positioning-roundtable-with-sramana-mitra-1072009/.

About Sramana

Sramana Mitra is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has founded three companies and provided strategy consulting to over 80 organizations, large and small. She writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra On Strategy, and is a columnist for Forbes. Sramana has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She is also the author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series.  Entrepreneur Journeys (Volume One), Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction (Volume Two), and Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market (Volume Three) are all available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle, and from Smashwords.com in all e-book formats.  Entrepreneur Journeys and Bootstrapping, published by Hachette India, are also for sale at bookstores in India.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks very much to some of our partners who help make these roundtables possible:

Dimdim http://www.dimdim.com/

Active Garage http://www.activegarage.com/

AMITA http://alumweb.mit.edu/groups/amita/

Astia http://www.astia.org/

TiE Bangalore http://www.bangalore.tie.org/

Campus2Careers http://www.campus2careers.com/

TiE Chennai http://www.chennai.tie.org/

IIT Bombay E-Cell http://www.ecell.in/

GEBN http://www.gebnonlin.com/

RTBI http://www.rtbi.com/

How to Train Future Innovative Entrepreneurs

The Kaufman foundation, a friend indeed of all things entrepreneurial, recently released the following:

Universities and colleges have increasingly established entrepreneurship education programs in the past few decades. In an effort to more fully understand the outcomes of this education, the SBA’s Office of Advocacy released an initial analysis of the impact of entrepreneurship programs.

 
The report, “Toward Effective Education of Innovative Entrepreneurs in Small Business: Initial Results from a Survey of College Students and Graduates,” is based on initial results from a pilot survey of students at five universities conducted in April and June 2008.  Funded with a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation challenge grant, the survey was designed and conducted by a team of researchers from New York University. Here are some interesting findings:
-    Students who took an entrepreneurship class were more innovative: they are more likely to have engaged in offering new products or services, obtaining patents or copyrights, and using production techniques that differ from those of the industry’s main competitor.

-    Graduates who have taken such courses are significantly more likely to select careers in entrepreneurship, which is defined as ever having founded, run, or been employed in a start-up or entrepreneurial team.

-    There is no discernable relationship between overall educational achievement (as defined by GPA and SAT scores) and selection of a career in entrepreneurship.

It’s like I’ve been preaching to my ENTR200 classes from day one. The fact that you are taking ENTR200 sets you apart from the Purdue masses – in a good way. Having done so, in the long run you will outperform your peers, all else being equal. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be a successful entrepreneur. Hank

Brutti

Brutti, along with his “handler,” Linda, starts working this coming Tuesday with learning disabled children in the Dayton, Indiana Elementary School and a Purdue Special Education Doctoral Student. Parade recently ran an article about Therapy Dogs which is worth a quick read to help you understand where Brutti is “coming from,” or going as the case may be. Brutti is a certified Therapy Dog via Delta Society and the local Caring Paws chapter.

Yesterday, Brutti participated in  The Trails of Hope outing for Grieving Children at Camp Cary. Giving it back is a trait most entrepreneurs develop.  Hank