mit_impact_full_report

An Evolving MIT Internal Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
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tools of market research, and sharing progress reports
with each other. The students learn much about
teamwork and the issues facing early-stage,
technology-based companies. Summer internships
and, later, full-time jobs often result from the E-Lab
projects. By the way, far more company projects are
volunteered than we can accommodate in a single
class, indicating the strength of the local network.
Two innovative entrepreneurship faculty members
who had been teaching “Entrepreneurship without
Borders” developed an approach for globalizing
E-Lab. They introduced “Global Entrepreneurship
Laboratory,” or G-Lab, in 2000, with the instructional
and preparatory parts of the class, including team
and company selection, taking place during the latter
half of the fall term. During November and
December, the teams work with company
management to define precise, deliverable objectives
and begin substantial background research while
on campus. Then, during MIT’s “open” January
Independent Activities Period, the teams go off to
every part of the world (outside of the U.S.) to work
with their chosen companies in three-week “team
internship” projects. Finishing up of the projects and
evaluation by both company and class occur during
February and March. This global entrepreneurial
subject rapidly has grown to be the most popular
elective course in the MIT Sloan School, with half of
the MBA class participating, providing them with a
non-U.S. entrepreneurial work experience. In seven
years, 185 host companies in eighteen countries have
“employed” 810 MIT students in G-Lab projects,
including 160 students during the past year. Professor
Richard Locke, who co-created and runs G-Lab, says:
“Only at MIT Sloan could we move from
brainstorming to in-the-field implementation in a
few short months. The student teams have offered
exciting, imaginative, and—perhaps most
important—effective changes in the way startups
around the globe conduct business.”
The third mixed-team, real-world project class is
“Innovation Teams,” or I-Teams (everything must
have a short name!), a “hands-on” team project
subject focused on developing commercialization
plans for carefully selected MIT faculty research
efforts. The idea was conceived at the time MIT
launched the Deshpande Center for Technological
Innovation (to be discussed later) in the School of
Engineering. Each team of business and technical
students deconstructs the features of the technology,
learns about the intellectual property issues in
cooperation with the MIT Technology Licensing
Office, scans the potential markets, interviews
prospective customers and industry experts, and
performs a go-to-market analysis in which it
recommends a course of action (e.g., startup,
partnership, licensing to industry, further research in
the lab). Every team is coached by a seasoned
entrepreneur from the Greater Boston community
and works closely with the MIT faculty principal
investigator of the underlying research project.
Case Example: SaafWater
During I-Teams’ very few years of operation,
some of the varied companies that already have
emerged following the teams’ class assistance are
Avanti Titanium, Hydrophobic Nanomaterials,
Myomo, SaafWater, and Vertica Systems. Myomo is
discussed in the later section on the Deshpande
Center. One of the other projects, SaafWater, built on
the research work of Amy Smith ’84, senior lecturer
and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, who created
MIT’s Development Lab program for carrying forward
engineering design and devising appropriate
technologies for developing countries. The
Deshpande Center had funded Smith’s hiring of
Sarah Bird ’03 to advance the phase-change
incubator research project that would indicate the
level of bacterial contamination in village wells. The
I-Teams student group developed detailed insights to
possible distribution channels worldwide and assisted
the principal researchers to enter the 2007 $100K
competition. The project reached the finals of the
new “development track” and attracted venture
capital investment. SaafWater was quickly
incorporated and has been operating its first pilot
plant in Pakistan since June 2007.
ENTREPRENEURIAL IMPACT: THE ROLE OF MIT