At Sloan, I have focused on an entrepreneurial education. I’ve been able to work with start-ups, build business plans, and help organize a business plan contest. Simultaneously, I’ve been able to study interesting business ideas. Having freedom to explore different areas and access to the resources to truly understand them has been incredible.
Most recently, I was talking to a friend about vehicle start-up ideas and was reminded of the work going on at the MIT MediaLab’s Smart Cities Group. I started looking into their work a bit more and was intrigued by the Mobility-on-Demand (MoD) concept that they were working on. MoD is essentially a fleet of vehicles dispersed throughout a city that users can rent for one-way trips. Short-term car rental has been successfully commercialized by Zipcar, but only for round-trip rentals. So I set up a meeting to discuss the concept of balancing one-way vehicle fleets with Dimitris Papanikolaou at the MediaLab. A few days after throwing the idea around, I was sitting down with the expert on the subject. Cool :)
Next, I had an assignment for a course called New Enterprises that required me to take an entrepreneur to dinner. Who did I invite? Zipcar founder and Sloan alum Robin Chase, obviously. Robin and I talked about her past and present ventures and current opportunities in transportation innovation. The next week, Ford Chairman and Sloan alum Bill Ford was walking the halls of Sloan. So... I had to ask him about opportunities that are opening as a result of wireless integration into vehicles.
It was great to be able to pick the brains of all of these experts, and I wanted to do something with what I had learned. Fortunately, some of my classmates had recently started the MIT Entrepreneurship Review (MITER). MITER is a perfect example of the initiative that Sloan students take to make their vision happen. One of MITER's co-founders, Rob Lemos, asked me to submit a piece to MITER, and it sounded like a perfect idea. It was great working with the MITER team to get the article on-line. So check it out! :) Robin told me that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. MIT is a lucky place.
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