Each year, The Idea Village hosts The Idea Village Entrepreneur Challenge (IVEC) to drive economic growth in New Orleans. This annual program offers local entrepreneurs access to a diverse resource pool of business experts, professional service providers, MBA students, investors and corporate volunteers who provide resources and strategy to accelerate business growth.
Body Evolution is a health media company that develops measurable, motivating tools that foster physiological and emotional well being and guide 200+ million Americans through their lifetime Body Image Journey. The group is currently working to develop an innovative, technological way to help improve body image.
The Music Shed is a music business industry incubator serving musicians, composers, songwriters, producers, music supervisors, and music production companies across the nation. The facility features a highly-trained technical staff, as well as, a recording studio, mixing suite, multi-purpose rooms and practice rooms.
Nica Naturals manufactures shea butters, bath salts, soy candles, and other natural products designed to promote a holistic approach to health, beauty, wellness, and restoration. Benardette seeks to create products that enhance beauty, promote wellness and an appreciation of our natural selves which is reflected in the company's motto Natural. Beautiful. You.
Repax designs, manufactures and distributes reusable shopping bags that are fashionable, durable, washable, compact and so easy to use. Their goal is to make joining the ever-growing green movement simple.
Tru Colors designs and sells a line of game day apparel for the fashion savvy female sports fan. The line offers non logo’d contemporary silhouettes in team color combinations, options that are a step up from traditional game day attire found in most fan shops, yet still affordable.
Don Kelly Productions launched in summer 2009 Louisiana’s first ever major music festival with a full eco-friendly mission and purpose. The festival features national performers and stages driven by solar and wind power, the use of renewable energy credits by both producer and attendees, green ticketing, recycling and composting of all waste, offsetting of any carbon footprint and proactive greening efforts to provide long term effects in New Orleans.
Feelgoodz is a lifestyle brand built upon a unique triple bottom line business model of 'People, Planet, Phitsanulok.' Feelgoodz uses sales of eco-friendly products as a pathway to creating positive social change in Thailand and, one day, beyond. The Feelgoodz eco-friendly flip-flop is marketed as the most comfortable rubber flip-flop in the world. Made from all natural latex in Thailand, Feelgoodz uses 70% more rubber than any other brand on the market. In addition to being dyed naturally, the product is recyclable and biodegradable.
Neighborhood Investment Strategies creates, promotes and supports alternative housing models as a way to repair urban neighborhoods. Neighborhood Investment Strategies’ focus is on expanding the pool of small, affordable rental properties through a small rental landlord program.
playNOLA provides year-round sports and specialized entertainment opportunities for individuals between the ages of 23-35 in the metro New Orleans area. Through organized team sports in a social atmosphere and focused social outings, playNOLA is becoming the premier gathering for young professionals to meet and compete in New Orleans.
Spark Insite(s)'s provides a supplement to traditional market studies, informing the site selection, program and design decisions of real estate developers, and provides independent verification of housing demand for banks, lenders and funders being solicited to invest in New Orleans.
The New Orleans Eco Design, Resource and Industry Park (EcoPark) was conceived in the post-Katrina environment of New Orleans to seize the opportunity in rebuilding to create a new, permanent base of green/sustainable building and renewable energy businesses and resources. EcoPark is developing the Building Block to create a hub of green commerce to serve the Greater New Orleans and Gulf Coast regions. It is a Triple Bottom Line project, with robust financial, social and sustainable business goals. The Building Block will cluster companies working in green building, energy efficiency, and environmentally responsible products and services into an accessible and well-communicated co-location.
James Carville, Jim Coulter, Bob Brown, General Wesley Clark, Amy Cosper, Dr. Scott Cowen, Mark Cuban, Michael Hecht, Walter Isaacson, Julie Silard Kantor, Robin Keegan, The Honorable Mitch Landrieu, Mary Matalin, Irvin Mayfield, Stephen Perry, Peter Reiling, Hugh Weber & Kurt Weigle
Just recently, Hardy was chosen as one of seven entrepreneurs to partner with an MBA team in New Orleans Entrepreneur Week 2010, when over 150 top MBA students, corporate volunteers, and our nation's most accomplished entrepreneurial talent congregated and collaborated in New Orleans to provide 9,121 hours of direct service to 329 early-stage New Orleans entrepreneurs....
What a year it has been so far! And now we are smack in the middle of festival season: Pinch me, I must be dreaming in the land of dreamy scenes. As good as it has been (Thank you, Saints. Thank you, Mitch. Thank you, Rex, etc.), plenty has been going on in parallel to all the Big Things that should not go unnoticed.
Right after Hurricane Katrina hit, the academic world responded to the disaster. Schools sent students to do relief work, symposiums were planned.... Over spring break, while many of their peers lapped up tropical-flavored drinks, business students from around the country flew to New Orleans, where they were matched with local entrepreneurs as part of Idea Village's Entrepreneur Week.
The first time's a charm. The Johnson School of Management team travelled to New Orleans from Mar. 20 to Mar. 27 to compete for the first time in the Entrepreneur Challenge and won first place - beating out rival business schools Stanford, Northwestern, University of California-Berkeley and University of Chicago.
Big Easy Blends, makers of the portable potable Mar-GO-rita, were chosen winners of New Orleans Entrepreneur Week’s competition among up and coming businesses. One of CityBusiness’ Innovator of the Year honoree in 2009, Big Easy Blends was founded in 2007 by Craig Cordes....
Mixing work with fun is a longtime New Orleans specialty and nobody does it better. Mix they did again this week in the Big Easy for the annual New Orleans Entrepreneur Week where some of the nation’s most creative minds congregated to celebrate, support and promote entrepreneurship and innovation.
A team from the Johnson School, participating in their first IdeaCorps Challenge in New Orleans, took first place among other visiting business-school teams from Kellogg, Booth, Haas and Stanford.
Jack and Jake's Local and Organic Market is a new business that plans to bring locally grown food to customers in underserved neighborhoods within three days of harvest, but to achieve that goal, the company first needs a top-notch distribution system. That’s where a team of MBA students from Tulane, Loyola and UNO comes in.
Hurricane Katrina disrupted the sense of detachment and malaise that can often envelope communities, and in doing so it laid the groundwork for a burgeoning innovative entrepreneurial community in New Orleans, the president and chief executive officer of the Aspen Institute said Monday.
Entrepreneur Week Kicks Off In New Orleans. Entrepreneur Week in New Orleans is a meeting of the minds for upstart businesses and up-and-coming talent. The week is about matching top business talent from across the country with ...
The Idea Village in New Orleans is an excellent model for how a small group of dedicated entrepreneurs have created a remarkable ecosystem. A group of young entrepreneurs in New Orleans went to Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Chicago, did well in start-ups and finance, and then moved back to the city....
Despite their splashy appearance, the three-foot-long, black and yellow flags emblazoned with a light bulb and the phrase "It's On In NOLA" that were sent to businesses around the metro area this month may prove to be an understated way ...
The digital-cable business network Bloomberg Television will present a live New Orleans edition of "On the Road with Betty Liu" on Tuesday (March 23) from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Let's spend a few minutes celebrating a victory and remembering what could have been. First of all, congratulations to The Idea Village for making its 10th year and helping countless New Orleans area entrepreneurs make something of themselves and their good ideas.
Organizers of New Orleans Entrepreneurship Week estimate the event will provide some $900,000 worth of consulting to local businesses. New Orleans already is the fastest-growing city in the U.S. - and a local nonprofit wants its businesses (and hopefully, a reputation for fostering innovation) to keep pace.
A team of Johnson School students has, for the first time, been invited to compete with the best in the Idea Village Entrepreneur Challenge in New Orleans, LA from March 20-28. The challenge, which is part of Entrepreneur Week, charges teams from the nation's leading MBA schools to use their professional skills in short-term, high impact service roles in the revitalization of New Orleans.
Google, Deloitte and Salesforce.com…Jazz Fest of Entrepreneurship…What a week…Attend Friday's Introduction, Cocktail Party and Mingler. Idea Village, a leading organization in Southeast Louisiana is announcing Entrepreneur Week which will be a week-long event involving many New Orleans sites, business and major national industry leaders.
When state economic development officials talk about the kinds of companies they want to attract to Louisiana, they point to TurboSquid.
Nic Perkin and The Receivables Exchange, an online auctionhouse for accounts receivable are trailblazing for a new generation of entrepreneurs by capitalizing on a huge theoretical market. New Orleans is welcoming driven entrepreneurs with open arms, says Tim Williamson, co-founder of The Idea Village. "The biggest ideas are the ones that have skepticism in the beginning."
Sean Callebs reports on how Rock 'n Bowl bounced back after Hurricane Katrina. Rock 'n Bowl discusses with CNN the generous grant he received from The Idea Village which made it possible for them to quickly open their doors to the public news-Katrina.
According to Tim Williamson, President and Co-founder of the Idea Village, New Orleans possesses, among other things, a university system and a creative culture. New Orleans is also a "worldwide brand." "The good news is that the foundation is there," Williamson says.
"If you look at the people that have come since Katrina, there has been this influx of talent who has come to New Orleans, initially to help, but now they are here to stay and live and to grow new companies. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent an American city," Tim Williamson said.
Small-business owners who left are now coming back, driven by a sense of mission to help the struggling city and to take advantage of generous tax breaks. Young professionals have moved to the Big Easy to help with its recovery, enjoy its cultural offerings and start businesses.
"Now you have some people who are here not just for the recovery, but who have drunk the Kool-Aid and want to be part of the long-term economic and social change of New Orleans," Tim Williamson said.
"If you’re a young, bright entrepreneur, New Orleans looks pretty interesting right now," [Idea Village CEO Tim] Williamson says. "There aren’t hundreds of thousands of layoffs; there’s actually a growing, entrepreneurial community. We’ve got our coolness, but there’s also a sense of opportunity here, because we’re going through a transformation."
"Competitive gets you nowhere. It's about being collaborative. And this city is so like that, from the people helping each other rebuild their homes to building businesses," said Seema Sudan, the owner and director of the knitwear company LiaMolly.
Clusters are a validation that entrepreneurs can create economic and social change.
Driven by the mantra "Trust your crazy ideas," The Idea Village is a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the city's for-profit entrepreneurial culture. Through a combination of talent attraction, technical support and connection to financing, the organization has supported more than 255 entrepreneurial ventures representing 946 jobs and more than $69 million in revenue.
Think Tank hosts Tim Williamson, Miji Park, Jo Ann Minor and Amy Cosper, Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, on July 24th to discuss entrepreneurship in New Orleans and the grand opening of The Entergy Innovation Center.
"When The Idea Village was founded in 2000, we were building the framework for vibrant entrepreneurial community. 9 years later, this nascent spirit is alive and growing" says Tim Williamson.
"Clustering entrepreneurs is quite useful," says Tim Williamson, President of The Idea Village, a New Orleans business incubator. "It allows people to interact closely, bump into each other at the water cooler, [and it] forces conversation," he says.
"The hubs operate under edgy names - Entrepreneur's Row, The Icehouse, The IP and the Entergy Innovation Center. The hubs encourage networking and collaboration among innovative companies while seeking to recreate a freewheeling culture reminiscent of Silicon Valley."
"New Orleans is attractive because there are lots of opportunities here and less layoffs than in other places like Boston or San Francisco," Tim Williamson said.
Regional New Orleans ad agency continues to craftily reinvent itself news-Katrina by becoming a startup incubator.
Turbosquid, a New Orleans-based 3-D imaging company becomes a worldwide leader in its industry despite difficult odds.
James Carville pens a tribute to New Orleans’s historic rebirth.
