With The Creator Economy and the emerging Metaverse, new media startups will need different resources, knowledge, and skills. It is well-documented that staying up-to-date can only be achieved through partnerships and industry-university partnerships are among the most crucial ones. Stanford University in Silicon Valley, Oxford and Cambridge in London, and MIT in Boston are legendary. But universities play vital roles in all the top Global Startup Ecosystems (according to The Startup Genome Report) and are increasingly the determining success factor in new rising tech hubs. Universities are co-creators of value, sources of human capital, and convenor, catalyst, and laboratory for innovation.

Media innovation and entrepreneurship calls for more creative approaches, different talents, an understanding of social science and metadata, and a deep knowledge of media business models and mechanisms.  Tallinn University and the Baltic Film and Media School (BFM) has relevant resources and skills in that field, but this can be turned into innovation only through close collaboration between startup ecosystem partners.

HEAR about BFM’s resources, researchers, students and facilities and ongoing activities and future plans. DISCUSS how these can  be used for collaboration purposes with media startups.

MEET Sean Branagan, director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University’s prestigious Newhouse School, the top media school in the USA. He is here in Tallinn on a Fulbright grant to help us develop the TLU Media Entrepreneurship program for our students, but also to make connections with the media startup community globally.  We will hear how his program has helped media startups get talent, make key connections in the media industry, build reputation, and create pilot projects to help showcase capabilities and identify future markets, products and services. With great pride, he will also talk about the student startups that came out of his program!

Then, LET’S TALK about what’s possible, what’s needed, and what would help YOU succeed.

Let’s dream big together.