In observance of the Martin Luther King holiday, Nightly Business Report teamed up with "Black Enterprise" magazine to present a special edition, American Dreamers, (January 21). Focusing on the minority entrepreneurial experience, the program featured Thomas "Danny" Boston, Professor, School of Economics.

"The key to growing minority businesses," Boston states, "is innovation and creativity, particularly in the current market. You have to be able to create a market space in a product and a service that's different from other competitors. And so those who are able to be creative and have the discipline and stick-to-it-ness are those who are successful."

Boston says minority entrepreneurs face many challenges. "On the positive side, is that there's such a tremendously fast-growing market, both in the minority community and among minority entrepreneurs. One out of every two companies that were started over the last decade is owned by a minority, so the business sector is growing along with the population. On the negative side, "The challenges relate to income within the community. What access does a community have to contracting opportunities in the government sector and private sector? So there's still those persistent challenges, some of which are related to discriminatory barriers and some related to networks."

The most common mistakes that minority entrepreneurs make is "not understanding the importance of the brand, Boston says. Everything is about branding and branding comes from developing quality associated with your service and product and then being protective of it and growing it so that individuals when they walk in a store, will select that product over any other, even if the price is higher," Boston concludes.