Course Spotlight: Michigan Ross Students Deliver Impactful Solutions and Strategic Recommendations to Minority-Owned Small Businesses

In MKT 313: Consumer Behavior, student teams work throughout the entire semester with real clients that are mostly from Detroit, many of whom are sourced by Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project. Student teams gather and analyze data to identify their clients’ target customer, what their customers value in their decision-making and why.  From this research, teams recommend marketing strategies for their clients to implement. The experience is designed to mimic an internship where students are enhancing many hard and soft skills like account management, research, communication, graphic design, and media planning. 

U-M students put skills to work through summer internship program, helping Detroit communities

U-M students put skills to work through summer internship program, helping Detroit communities

Each summer many students scramble for the chance to gain work experience through an internship, happy to get even one company or business to bite. But for Samantha Lang, a junior in the Ford School of Public Policy, the summer was rich with opportunities. Through her involvement with The Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project she worked with Detroit small businesses like Fit4Life, Sister Pie, Pink Poodle Dress Lounge and Bags to Butterflies, all the while supporting and strengthening the local community. 
The Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project connects small businesses with University of Michigan students and staff to help solve the issues they …

Stamps students join Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project

Stamps students join Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project

Students from the University of Michigan’s Penny Stamps School of Art and Design spent a part of their summer in the city of Detroit, gaining valuable experience as interns in the Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project (DNEP) + Impact Studio for Local Business internship program.
From May 4 to June 24, they joined forces with the Ford School, Ross School of Business, and the School of Information. Stamps Career Development contributed part of the internship costs, ensuring that students were compensated for their work with undercapitalized small businesses.
They formed interdisciplinary teams to provide free services and resources to Detroit small businesses and entrepreneurs. Their goal was to assist with the …

CFLP and School of Information lauded for Detroit Community Tech Worker project

CFLP and School of Information lauded for Detroit Community Tech Worker project

The Center on Finance, Law & Policy is partnering with U-M’s School of Information (SoI) to provide Detroit’s Jefferson East Inc. (JEI) neighborhood organization, in a tech program aimed at aiding small businesses. Crain’s Detroit Business quotes JEI Director of Neighborhood Resilience Lutalo Sanifu as saying that he hopes to involve 140 businesses in the year-long project. “Tech experience is important, but not nearly as important as people being able to work with small business owners in underserved communities,” he said.
“We’re hoping this is a sustainable model. We are trying to build on a ‘train the trainer’ idea where the …

U-M students meet with a client

Partnerships in focus: Learning and research collaborations that create better public policy

Lily Hamburger (MBA ’16) supports economic mobility for entrepreneurs as the senior director of the pandemic-born Detroit Means Business, a coalition housed at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation and guided by a group of small business owner advisors. She works in collaboration with nonprofits, financial programs, and corporate partners to provide financial and technical assistance to small businesses. In this role, she also serves as a sounding board for the Ford School’s Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurship Project (DNEP) and facilitates connections between businesses and student learning projects.

Detroit’s passionate small businesses welcome Urban Entrepreneur students

Every fall CFE lecturer David Tarver takes his ENTR 490.012, Urban Entrepreneurship Practicum, into the heart of Detroit to meet with local entrepreneurs and hear about the issues and opportunities small businesses face. This year the class visited five businesses: Good Cakes and Bakes, Century Partners, Shinola, SpaceLab Detroit, Hamtramck/Banglatown Bangladeshi American Public Affairs Committee.

Baer considers long-term challenges for downtown businesses

Baer considers long-term challenges for downtown businesses

According to Christie Baer, assistant executive director for the University of Michigan’s Center on Finance, Law and Policy, downtown businesses face a big decision as the pandemic continues.
“Businesses that thought that they just had to weather a short storm are suddenly realizing that it’s going to be like this for a long time,” she said. “It just becomes not as worth it to pay a higher cost of being downtown.”