Turning good ideas into businesses

A place where entrepreneurs thrive

With only two months to make their idea for an international vehicle design competition happen, Robyn Allen ’07 and Anna Jaffe ’08 did what most MIT students do. They began criss-crossing the country—meeting with potential sponsors, raising money, finding work space near MIT’s campus, and arranging for teams of students from around the world to travel to MIT. 

Two months later, 55 students from 13 countries were on MIT’s campus, crafting vehicles that could run on human power, bio-fuels, solar technology, and fuel cells.

Fertile ground

Such entrepreneurial spirit permeates the Institute. MIT has created an atmosphere where good ideas are nurtured, explored, and brought to fruition. Formally, the Institute encourages entrepreneurs through more than two dozen initiatives across the campus, including:

• The MIT Entrepreneurship Program), whose faculty and staff offer in-depth academic and practitioner-based education, as well as networking opportunities to inspire, develop, and coach a new generation of high tech entrepreneurs drawn from all academic areas of MIT;

• The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the Institute’s storied business plan contest, which provides resources and inspiration for student teams to turn their ideas into companies, and which has helped establish more than 80 companies with an aggregate value in excess of $10.5 billion;

• The Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, which turns innovation into entrepreneurship, funding research and shaping it with an eye toward commercialization; and which has given $6 million in grants so far, resulting in nine spin-out companies that have collectively raised over $100 million in outside funding;

• Sloan Women in Management (SWIM), a student organization that offers women MBA students networking opportunities, peer mentoring, and a lecture series, all designed to foster the professional development of women at MIT’s Sloan School of Management; and

• The Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), which pairs experienced entrepreneurs with MIT students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have ideas for new businesses and then provides mentoring and advice. In the last six years the VMS has worked with about 500 individuals and is currently supporting about 170 ventures.

“Each of the initiatives is like a shiny stone that reflects light by itself. Taken together, they create a mosaic where the whole picture is even brighter,” says Ken Morse, managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

Importantly, the Institute also encourages that entrepreneurial spirit in its students in more informal ways—in every classroom, every hallway, every dorm room, and every lab. The result is a community teeming with ideas, potential startup companies, and disruptive technologies.

And, when there isn’t a suitable venue to meet students’ entrepreneurial needs, the students create one. When M.B.A. candidate David Spector came to MIT Sloan, he recognized the need to nurture a spirit of sales in the M.B.A. program, even beyond the chronically oversubscribed course #15.387, “High Tech Sales and Sales Management.” With help from the E-Center, Spector started the Sales Club, which now offers guest lectures and organizes conferences to give MIT Sloan M.B.A. candidates the tech sales know-how to start successful businesses.

Likewise, local VCs worked with the MIT Energy Club, the MIT Sloan Energy & Environment Club, and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center to launch the New England Energy Innovation Collaborative. This Collaborative will complement MIT’s Energy Initiative and related activities to help solve the world’s energy crisis.

Bringing ideas to market

When an idea at MIT is ready for commercialization, or the market is seeking new ideas from MIT, the Institute’s Technology Licensing Office (TLO) brings the entrepreneur and the idea to the next level. TLO staff often meet face-to-face with entrepreneurs, and, through a repetitive process of redefining opportunities and needs, match the entrepreneurs with several of the over 2000 patented ideas available at MIT (web.mit.edu/tlo/www/industry/PAL.html). Generally, the licensing officer will then suggest faculty or other contacts to help the entrepreneur explore their ideas further. 

“When a faculty member comes to MIT, he or she is surrounded by other faculty members who have done startups. At some universities, you might not tell others you have a startup. Here, it’s a point of pride. It’s a part of the culture,” says Steve Brown, the TLO’s liaison with entrepreneurial programs.

And it’s not just students, professors, and researchers whose ideas are turned into products and companies. One recent patent was filed by an administrative assistant in the MIT Media Lab. The invention has since been licensed to a large technology company.

“Entrepreneurship is embedded throughout MIT,” says Professor Edward Roberts, founder and chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

Indeed, it is. And as for Jaffe and Allen, the two undergraduates who organized the Vehicle Design Summit, their entrepreneurial ambitions go beyond organizing one event. When the visiting teams returned to their home universities, Jaffe and Allen went back to work. They are now planning another international summit. This time their goal is to collaboratively design a highly efficient, production-worthy five-passenger vehicle, and to make it available to the mass market by 2009. As any MIT student would.

Giving opportunities

Support for entrepreneurship at MIT is an investment that will be leveraged many times over by students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae as they turn their ideas into new technologies, cures for diseases, or startup companies. Here are some ways to invest in entrepreneurship at MIT:

Endow a named professorship for a new senior faculty member: $5 million

Fund the programs and activities of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center for one year: $1.2 million

Fund the Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (a new curriculum for Sloan M.B.A. students keenly interested in technological innovation): $300,000

Fund research and development of case studies (published in collaboration with Harvard Business School): $250,000

Support MIT Entrepreneurship clubs for one year (fund copiers, phones, incidentals for The MIT $100K, the Venture Capital Club, Bioinnovators Club, Energy Club, and others): $100,000

Support the MIT Entrepreneurship Center’s 21 unpaid lecturers with materials and assistants for one year: $100,000