Entrepreneurship Center Visits

During our summer entrepreneurship program for high school students, the top universities of Boston were gracious enough to allow us to tour their entrepreneurship centers.

Christina Chase, the Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, provides the knowledge, support, and connections needed for MIT students to become entrepreneurs. On July 21, Christina showed students around this innovative space that brings students together from across campus to provide the expertise, support, and connections needed to become effective entrepreneurs.  She also provided business advice to many of the student teams during the tour and was a mentor to one team throughout the program.  A student of the Trust Center, Gabe Blanchet, also came to the classroom on multiple occasions, providing advice to the students both on their businesses and their futures.MIT has been able to make a substantial economic impact through the Institute’s alumni entrepreneurs, whose companies have created millions of jobs and generate annual revenues of nearly $2 trillion — a figure greater than the gross domestic product (GDP) of the world’s 10th-largest economy.  In 2009, Edward Roberts, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-authored a report estimating that, as of 2006, MIT alumni had founded 25,800 active companies worldwide, employing 3.3 million people and generating nearly $2 trillion in annual revenues.

Only July 24, we got to tour the new Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) on the campus of the Harvard Business School.  The i-lab serves as a resource for students from across Harvard interested in entrepreneurship and innovation, helping them grow their ventures at any stage of development and covering a wide range of disciplines. The Launch students loved seeing the openness of the co-working space, inspirational collaboration and whiteboard methods, and even made some powerful connections by networking and talking about their ideas and learning more about what others were working on. "The iLab tour was so amazing- and the most important thing was realizing that there is really an infinite potential for idea development and novel solutions to needs." - Student FeedbackWhile the Harvard Innovation Lab space is relatively new, it is already boasting some impressive impact in the Harvard entrepreneurial community, impacting many students and companies, hosting lots of events, and supporting students in getting venture funding.