Twenty-plus years ago, I helped launch the $10K Business Plan Competition now known as the MIT $100K Competition. Back then there was very little of formalized entrepreneurship activities at MIT. The $100K gave rise to the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation after Desh Deshpande had served as a $50K judge and noticed that there weren’t as many cutting-edge early-stage ideas in the competition as he would have liked. Around the same time Professor Dave Staelin, and MIT alum Alec Dingee got the Venture Mentoring Service off the ground, which among other things provided “after $100K support” to entrepreneurs who had entered the $100K.
Over the last 20 years, I have talked to a variety of delegations from other U.S. states and from foreign countries seeking to understand how to be as successful as MIT has been in entrepreneurship. They have seen the MIT Founders Report and the follow up report Professor Ed Roberts did for the Kauffman Foundation that shows that there are 125,000 living MIT alums and that the 25,000-plus active companies founded by MIT alums or professors if taken together would constitute the 11th largest economy in the world.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Ideas for Indonesia and Beyond | Xconomy
