mit_impact_full_report

Entrepreneurs promotes networking events within
the MIT Sloan School, with the Greater Boston
community, other local MBA programs, and
established Boston organizations. Tech Link started
in 1999 as a joint venture between the MIT Sloan
Senate and the MIT Graduate Student Council to
generate social interaction across school and
departmental lines for personal and professional
development. With 1,200 members, it has become
the largest student organization at MIT. It organizes
many major events each year, including “treks” to
visit early-stage companies in different technological
fields. The MIT Innovation Club centers its activities
on helping its members to generate new ideas and
commercialize new technologies. And there are
many others.
One of the most vital and successful student
activities is the Venture Capital/Private Equity Club.
Evolving from a small interest group with local
speakers, the group now organizes and runs two
major nationwide conferences, the MIT Venture
Capital Conference in the fall and the MIT Private
Equity Conference in the spring, wholly managed by
MIT students. The hundreds of attendees from the
professional community, as well as MIT students,
make invaluable contacts for their entrepreneurial
ventures and for recruiting opportunities.
Conferences
In addition to facilitating the major conferences
of the VC/PE Club, the E-Center goes outside of MIT’s
boundaries to produce several key conferences that
further enhance the environment for new-firm
formation. Its most visible Cambridge event is the
annual so-called “Bio Bash,” more formally known as
the “Celebration of Biotechnology in Kendall
Square.” Last year, more than 850 registered for the
event, including 150 founders, CEOs, and board
members. As with the many other seminars and
receptions organized by the MIT E-Center, the
purpose is to bring together students, entrepreneurs,
venture capitalists, and others who will enhance
networking and communications that might stimulate
An Evolving MIT Internal Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
additional entrepreneurship. With MIT in the center
of an intensive biotechnology cluster, including the
MIT-related Whitehead and Broad Institutes, creating
the Bio Bash was a natural opportunity. In recent
years, the program has started with a professional
colloquium on some major topic of importance to the
biotech community, providing a “legitimate” excuse
for some executives to travel to Cambridge from
Europe or the West Coast just for the day.
Each semester, the E-Center organizes a major
networking reception in the MIT Faculty Club to
honor the CEOs of past and present “E-Lab
companies,” i.e., those that have hosted student
teams from the Entrepreneurship Lab classes. The
current students always are given prominence at this
event to try to promote summer internships and
permanent jobs with the heads of the high-tech
companies and their many venture capital investors
who regularly attend the reception. For the past three
years, the spring “E-Lab Bash” has featured the
award of the Adolf Monosson ’48 Prize for
Entrepreneurship Mentoring, given to recognize a
person or group who has been outstanding over the
years in nurturing and assisting young entrepreneurs.
Over several recent years, MIT had a partnership
with the United Kingdom called the Cambridge MIT
Initiative. The transfer to British universities of insights
from the MIT E-Center and the $100K were key
components of the relationship. Annually in London,
the E-Center organized a black-tie networking event
that drew 500 people to build entrepreneurial ties.
Attendees included the student leadership and the
year’s winning team of the MIT $100K competition.
Even the Brits were surprised at their own enthusiasm
for such rousing get-togethers. Observers at any of
these conferences/receptions/parties could see that
the real benefits were in the numerous one-on-one
conversations that were happening between job
seekers and job providers, between enterprises
looking for money and investors searching for good
targets, and between those with new ideas and
those with previously developed skills wanting their
next chance.
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