mit_impact_full_report

entrepreneurship, media, and even beer
manufacturing.” In December 2008, O’Brien
launched a Web 2.0 company that he began with an
E&I classmate during their second year in the
program.
Half of the inaugural group previously had
founded their own or been part of startup
companies. Many more company formation initiatives
began even within the first term of the students’
arrival on the MIT campus. A group of the first-year
E&I class demonstrated its entrepreneurial savvy by
winning the UC-Berkeley School of Business “Media
Case Competition,” sponsored by Yahoo!, and took
home a check for $10,000. Another first-year E&I
participant became part of an African-American team
that won the $10,000 first prize at the 2006 Whitney
M. Young New Venture Competition at the Wharton
School, the three finalists being MIT, Stanford, and
UCLA. One more classmate was a $1K winner and
another a finalist in the MIT $100K competition. In
November 2008, with three E&I classes underway, the
evidences continue to grow of MBA students’ strong
desires to create their own new firms, despite the E&I
program leadership’s guidance that they first gather
more real-world experience working in startups
before initiating such actions on their own. Twentyfive
’08 MBA graduates, the first year of E&I program
completion, started their own companies before or
upon graduation from MIT Sloan, three times the
number of immediate startups from the Class of
2007. This may be an early sign of the E&I track’s
impact on its own group as well as on other
entrepreneurial classmates.
Recent MIT Institutional Broadening and Growth
ENTREPRENEURIAL IMPACT: THE ROLE OF MIT 65