According to Xconomy, MIT
is planning to launch a student-led online publication focused on
entrepreneurship by the end of the year. The fledgling publication will be called the MIT
Entrepreneurship Review (MITER) and will aim to serve as a resource for
entrepreneurs and to raise the already high profile of the prestigious
school in the business world.

The publication is being organized much like a law review, seeking
student editors, based on merit, to provide editorial content, said
Eduard Viladesau, a graduate student at the MIT Sloan School of
Management, who is one of the founders of MITER. The plan is to have
weekly columns that focus on entrepreneurship issues in the energy,
life sciences, and IT sectors. The publication’s editorial review board
currently consists of several MIT faculty members such as Bob Langer
and Michael Cima who have experience in inventing technologies and
founding numerous startups. (Our own Bob has also agreed to serve as an
advisor to MITER.) It’s also expected that other entrepreneurs and
business leaders who are affiliated with MIT will contribute articles
to the publication.

While academic publications such as the Harvard Business Review
cover entrepreneurship as well as other business issues, Viladesau
said, the MIT Entrepreneurship Review plans to have an exclusive focus
on entrepreneurship. The content of the online publication—which will
include case studies, startup profiles, and analyses of major trends or
problems facing entrepreneurs—is expected to be more technical and
analytical than, say, stories in the popular press. But the articles
will not be peer-reviewed or as elaborate as those found in a
traditional academic journal. The Web-based publication will be
available for free on the public Internet.

“We have three main missions,” Viladesau said. “One is to build and
promote the thought-leadership brand of MIT.” The other two goals of
the publication are to serve as a resource to entrepreneurs and to
attract top students to the school.

The concept of a Web-based and student-run entrepreneurship
publication was previously adopted at Stanford University. Stanford’s
Entrepreneurship Corner, or ECorner,
is a free online publication that features videos, podcasts, and
written resources for entrepreneurs. Viladesau told me that MITER will
initially have mostly written articles, but future plans include videos
and other multimedia offerings like those found at ECorner.

Viladesau told Xconomy that the idea to found the publication came from Bill Aulet, acting director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center
(and an Xconomist), who recruited Viladesau to help transform the idea
into reality. Aulet is now advising Viladesau and two other Sloan
students who are managing the development of the publication. (MIT
professor Ed Roberts, the chairman and founder of the MIT
Entrepreneurship Center, is on the editorial advisory board of MITER.)
The group is expected to hold a competition to select student editors
for the publication, and each of them will receive a $1,000 cash prize
for winning a slot on the editorial team. The publication could launch
as early as late November.

Happy Turkey Day…be sure and eat too much and fall asleep on the couch as Dallas & Romo lose to the hapless Raiders….