More Great Articles About The IDEAcorps Challenge ’09 Week

Visiting Graduate Business Students Worked With Local Entrepreneurs This Week
The Times Picayune

Kyle Berner had big news to share Tuesday when he walked into a classroom-turned-conference room on the Tulane University campus to meet with a team of business consultants.

Berner had been informed minutes earlier that his company Feelgoodz, which sells biodegradable footwear, had extended its distribution deal with Whole Foods Market to include the four states in the Southern Pacific region.

The consultants were meeting to figure out how to fulfill the distribution deal Berner had landed weeks earlier to place his Thailand-manufactured flip-flops in the grocery store chain's South region. That deal, alone, meant Berner would have to increase his pace of flip-flop manufacturing from about 300 pairs a month to 2,000. Now, Berner told the consultants, he would have to add about 3,000 to that order.

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Birthing Business in The Big Easy
CityBusiness

The Idea Village touts New Orleans as a laboratory for innovation and believes the city will create a blueprint for the rest of the country to follow when it comes to fostering entrepreneurship. The IdeaCorps experience is an opportunity for the city to roll out its red carpet to the future of small business, as each MBA who leaves with a positive experience could be one who does business with or possibly in New Orleans.

And that Berner and the Naked Pizza guys plan to build their burgeoning empires here sends a clear signal New Orleans can foster small business growth.

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