By Glenda Ortega
April 30, 2013
Teams wrap up semester-long consulting projects with MU symposium.
Six teams of business and journalism students from the University of Missouri presented consulting projects they did for media companies on Friday at the Center for the Digital Globe Symposium in Columbia, marking the culmination of a semester’s worth of work for a class focused on entrepreneurship in a changing media landscape.
For the class, each student team was paired with one of six media companies — the Associated Press, Minnesota Public Radio, Next Avenue, the American Newspaper Digital Access Corporation, Treepple and Nation Media — to help solve a problem facing that company.
At the symposium, each group presented a solution to its partner company’s problem, complete with an evaluation of marketplace conditions, competition, marketing, financials and other aspects of the business.
Professors for the class, which is co-taught by faculty from the university’s Trulaske College of Business and Missouri School of Journalism, included Missouri Business Alert founder Randall Smith.
“My experience surpassed all my expectations,” Glen Cameron, a Treepple co-founder and MU professor, said of having a student team consult for Treepple.
The students that worked with Cameron created a model of commercialization for his company, which helps health care providers send tailored wellness news to their patients. “I am absolutely convinced that it’s a place for news that people can truly use to alleviate all the self-inflicted health conditions that people are suffering from,” Cameron said.
Nestor Santos, an MBA student, was part of the Minnesota Public Radio team, which spent the semester working on a plan to double revenues for the company’s station in Rochester, Minn. “It was very rewarding to know from within the operation of a company engaged in the business of radio, especially for its revenue model primarily supported by donations and memberships of their listeners, which is an operating model across the country in public broadcasting primarily,” Santos said.
