MIT and Entrepreneurship

MIT Facts 2013: Entrepreneurship: " . . . MIT’s preeminence in entrepreneurship is rooted in its founding. The Institute was one of the first land-grant colleges, and was designed to deliver a practical education instead of the focus on the classics at many private universities that were founded to train clergy. Its emphasis on mens et manus, “mind and hand,” is infused into the entrepreneurship curriculum and programming, which emphasizes learning by doing. In the 2011–2012 academic year, 42 entrepreneurship classes saw 2,753 course enrollments, including six Independent Activities Period short courses. A new summer program, the MIT Founders’ Skills Accelerator, received 129 applications for 10 student-team slots in summer 2012, showing that entrepreneurship is a year-round endeavor at MIT. A 2009 study based on data from 2001 and 2003 suggested that 25,800 companies founded by MIT alumni were active as of 2006, employing 3.3 million people and producing annual revenues of $2 trillion, equivalent to the 11th-largest economy in the world. Hundreds of new companies are started each year, and 41 percent of MIT founders are serial entrepreneurs, having started multiple companies. Founders are getting younger as well. The average new entrepreneur who graduated in the 1990s starts a company at age 28, whereas founders who graduated in the 1950s started their first companies on average at age 40.5. Around 30 percent of international students at MIT go on to found companies, half of them located in the United States. By contrast, around 20 percent of MIT’s US students have founded companies. . . ."


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