By Rodney H. Brown

What do you do if as a university you are responsible for more annual revenue generation than most of the countries in the world? Make sure you can keep producing the innovators that are behind that innovation economy, MIT president Susan Hockfield told members of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce at a breakfast forum Wednesday morning.

The economic data Hockfield cited comes from a Sloan School of Management study that says that MIT alumni have been responsible for starting 25,800 existing companies that employ more than 30 million people and pull in more than $2 trillion combined in annual revenue. That only counts companies still running as individual entities and only alumni still alive, and it still adds up to the equivalent of the 12th largest economy on the planet.

With that kind of a legacy, it is no surprise that one of Hockfield’s missions is to continue putting innovators into the pipeline, and it is working with the city of Boston to expand an existing program to help mentor students in science and engineering to all public schools in the city. That program began at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, formerly known as Boston Technical High School, and has led to three O’Bryant students currently in the MIT undergraduate program, Hockfield said.

Hockfield noted that such programs have wide support within the business sector as well, because the technology-based businesses that are the drivers of Massachusetts’ economic engine need that talent pipeline as much as MIT does.

“Frankly, the success of MIT is not about MIT alone, it is about the region,” Hockfield said.

While the difficult economy has been weighing on everyone’s mind, Hockfield challenged those in the room to embrace the points of value that it provides.

“This region is poised to take advantage of this opportunity that is disguised as a crisis,” Hockfield said.

Can MIT do more to prime the talent pump? How can business and industry help? Let us know what you think.