New CSUF Business Incubator Program in Placentia to Assist Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Founders of the CSUF Startup Incubator gather in front of the Placentia, California, facility in summer 2014.

Founders of the CSUF Startup Incubator gather at the new facility in Placentia

Mihaylo’s Center for Entrepreneurship is preparing to open the CSUF Startup Incubator, the first CSUF business incubator, in Placentia. The business incubator will utilize entrepreneurs in residence and industry-experienced mentors affiliated with the Center for Entrepreneurship to guide aspiring business start-ups into viable business models.

Students at CSU Fullerton often aspire to start their own businesses, yet attaining the skills, resources and knowledge to succeed can be a daunting task.

“It is my observation that we have many outstanding entrepreneurs with innovative business ideas at CSUF; with proper support and coaching for the entrepreneurs, these ideas could become viable businesses, “John Bradley Jackson, director of Mihaylo’s Center for Entrepreneurship, says. Three years ago, he wrote the business plan for the CSUF Startup Incubator, an off-campus business incubator that will open in nearby Placentia by mid-November.

Established through a partnership with the City of Placentia, which provided the small building at 120 South Bradford, the center will be a “mixed-use incubator.” Jackson explains: “This means that we do not specialize in a certain type of industry. We are looking for innovative ideas that are scalable, meaning capable of growing to a large company. The scalability requirement favors companies that build repeatable products rather than direct labor businesses.” Read More

From Bossa Nova to Balanced Spreadsheets: Mihaylo Senior Spends Summer in Brazil

Mihaylo College grad Taryn Hoffmann-Torres interned with Deloitte in Brazil in 2015.

Photo by James Calish

Taryn Hoffmann-Torres, a business accounting senior, spent this past summer in Brazil, in an internship with Deloitte, one of the “big four” accounting firms. Hoffmann-Torres recounts her experiences while in Brazil and how international internships can benefit business students.

Understanding the importance of internships in the contemporary business world, business accounting senior Taryn Hoffmann-Torres ‘15 took an accounting intern position in summer 2014. Working for Deloitte, a global financial services corporation operating in 150 countries, Hoffmann-Torres spent the summer in Fortaleza, Brazil, with the company’s Global Internship Program (GIP).

“The flight, lodging and meals were fully paid, in addition to a generous hourly pay that made the opportunity even more attractive,” Hoffmann-Torres says. “I had never been to Brazil but was always intrigued by its melting pot of cultures, its music, such as the samba and bossa nova, and its cuisine,” she says. “More importantly, I liked the challenge of working abroad and wanted to have a memorable internship experience.”

Deloitte prepared Hoffmann-Torres for the assignment by providing cultural travel guides and free access to language learning software Rosetta Stone to learn Portuguese, Brazil’s official language. Spoken by 250 million people around the world, mostly in Portugal, Brazil and parts of southern Africa, Portuguese is a romance language, like Spanish. Read More

Cal State Fullerton Business Alumnus Finds Success as Restaurant Owner and Author

Michael Oates, a Mihaylo College MBA alumnus who is the founder of Cafe Hidalgo in Downtown Fullerton and author of "Wade in the Water," a novel on the 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood. A Cal State Fullerton business undergraduate and MBA alumnus, Michael Oates shares his success as an entrepreneur and author of the historical novel Wade in the Water. He gives practical advice on how to succeed as a startup in the Southern California restaurant industry and shares the inspiration for his novel, which discusses one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

Michael Oates, owner of Café Hidalgo in downtown Fullerton and author of the historical novel Wade in the Water, is a 1992 graduate of CSUF Mihaylo’s MBA program. During the past 20 years, he has used the knowledge gained from his degrees to become both a successful entrepreneur in the restaurant industry and an author. Oates credits much of his success to his Mihaylo education.

“Receiving my MBA from CSUF has given me confidence and credibility in both the restaurant industry and the business community at large,” he says. “Yes, there were a lot of classes to take, exams to study for, papers to write and a wealth of knowledge to absorb, but the benefits went far beyond that.”

He believes that the practical skills he learned in his classes has helped him perform basic accounting, marketing and management for his business, yet he believes that it is the reputation and commitment attached to a top-notch college education that opens doors. “Higher education, especially a program such as Mihaylo’s, where heavy class loads and high expectations are the norm, builds a strong, resilient character that others see, colleagues are drawn to and bosses cannot help but notice,” he says. Read More

Asia’s Rising Economies: What Business Students Need to Know

A view of the Hong Kong skyline from the The Peak.

Hong Kong, one of the four Asian Tiger economies that powered the region’s economic transformation in the second half of the 20th century.

The economies of East Asia are outpacing the world average in economic growth and are projected to continue their rise to prominence in the future. In a globalized world economy, what do business students need to know about the rise of the Asian economies? CSUF Economics Professor Robert Mead shares some insights about the economies of East Asia and what students can do to be active participants in the world economy.

East Asia, a region encompassing the economic giants Japan and China as well as the upstart economies of Southeast Asia, has a population of 2.2 billion people, over a quarter of the world’s total. It also has more than a third of the world’s total economic output.

CSUF Economics Professor Robert Mead tells students that the East Asian economies have been remarkable in their persistence toward economic vitality over the past half century. The region’s economic development started in Japan and spread to the “Asian Tiger” economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore in the mid-20th Century. China has made a transition from a Communist command economy to one of the world’s most dynamic economies, while Southeast Asian nations such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are rapidly becoming developed countries.

“China, India, Japan and Korea are the four major economies in Asia, though all of the Asian economies are growing faster than the rest of the world in the general,” Mead says. Particularly, China and India are notable because of their huge populations – more than one billion citizens each – which make them economic leaders by sheer size alone. Yet all of the Asian economies are notable for outpacing the world average in economic growth over the last 50 years. Read More

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