Entrepreneurship and Innovation

MIT’s preeminence in innovation is rooted in its founding. As one of the first land-grant colleges, the Institute was designed to deliver a practical education rather than to focus on the classical education that was provided by many private universities of that era. This emphasis on practice is infused into the entrepreneurship curriculum and programming, which emphasizes learning by doing. Over the course of the 2018–2019 academic year, more than 85 entrepreneurship courses were offered, as well as not-for-credit boot camps during the Independent Activities Period and the MIT delta v accelerator program in the summer.

There are more than 200 resources dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT. These are just a few:

MIT also has a wealth of student clubs and initiatives involved in entrepreneurship or innovation, among them the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the MIT Clean Energy Prize, and conferences such as Hacking Arts and Hacking Medicine.

MIT’s educational efforts in entrepreneurship and innovation have an impressive impact at local, regional, and global levels. A 2015 study (PDF) reported that 30,000 companies founded by MIT alumni were active as of 2014, employing 4.6 million people and producing annual revenues of $1.9 trillion, equivalent to the world’s 10th largest economy. MIT alumni form hundreds of new companies each year, and approximately 40% of MIT founders are serial entrepreneurs, starting multiple companies. Twenty-three percent of MIT alumni’s new firms are founded outside the United States.