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.
Before President Obama’s speech at MIT on Friday afternoon, he toured some of the school’s labs and met with researchers. Among the “neat stuff” the president saw was the 2005 MHT Woman to Watch Angela Belcher, who’s developing a battery grown from a virus. It was the second time Obama met the battery, which made a trip to Washington D.C. with MIT president Susan Hockfield last spring.
The recession may be joylessly over, but things aren’t looking too good, according to Fidelity Ventures VC Larry Cheng’s favorite economic indicator: The Grassroots Deli on Devonshire St.
Cheng says he’s been checking in on the Financial District deli’s business since everything went to hell a year ago, and the reports have gotten progressively worse.
The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch talks to Flybridge’s Michael Greeley about the growing, stimulus-fueled health care IT sector:
New efforts to overhaul the health care system is creating opportunity for a new generation of health care-IT hybrids. The federal stimulus law, which allocates $19 billion to health care-IT, combined with Congress’s efforts to provide health insurance to the uninsured, is enticing entrepreneurs and investors alike. “I have seen a marked increase in deal flow to capture the $19 billion in stimulus spending,” said Michael Greeley, general partner of Flybridge Capital Partners.
The number of Massachusetts residents working in the biotech industry has reached an all-time high, according to new data compiled by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. The number of biotech workers in 2008 was 45,905, up just slightly from the year before, but up 42.6 percent over the past seven years.
And when politicos talk about bringing good-paying jobs to the state, this is what they mean: the average biotech salary is $89,829, a huge raise from the average salary across all sectors in Massachusetts, which is $51,151.
Massachusetts got a slightly smaller slice of the venture capital pie for the first half of 2009, winning about 18 percent of all biotech VC funding across the country, down from 20 percent last year. But Massachusetts remains the second-best funded state, after California, when it comes to VC investment in biotech. (more…)
Staff writer Julie Donnelly talked to New England Business Day about a few startups that have launched despite the sorry state of the economy for life sciences firms.
In today’s NewsFlash roundup, Dataupia may not be coming down for breakfast, Genzyme’s Allston problem gets worse, and Drew Bledsoe, VC, makes a cleantech investment.
Just two months after the company cut its staff levels by more than 50 percent, data-warehousing appliance company Dataupia Inc. is seeking to sell its assets, according to an online report.
Former New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe’s investment firm has invested $10 million in a Florida water purification technology company. Bledsoe Capital Group, founded in 2007 by the 14-year NFL veteran and Montana attorney Chad Wold, will receive a 33 percent stake in Ecosphere Energy Services LLC, a subsidiary of Stuart, Fla., water engineering and services firm Ecosphere Technologies Inc.
As a result of dumping the unfinished batches of Cerezyme, Genzyme will have to take an $8.4 million write-off in addition to the $14.2 million already announced. (more…)
Production of semiconductors, computers, mobile phones and other electronic equipment is still considerably below pre-crisis levels but has rebounded strongly from the end of 2008 and early 2009, the organization says in a report set for publication this week.
“Even a few weeks ago, we didn’t see the bounce-back in the data,” said Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, an O.E.C.D. economist. “We were still grappling with the size of the downturn. Now, this could be the turning point.”
Boston Scientific’s way up, VC deals are way down, and Epix is down and out in today’s NewsFlash roundup. Also, News editor Rodney Brown drops by Draper Lab’s Apollo 11 anniversary party.
The Natick-based manufacturer of medical devices had revenue of $2.07 billion in the second quarter of this year, up slightly from $2.02 billion in the second quarter of 2008. Net income increased to $158 million from $98 million a year earlier.
The Lexington-based company’s officials said that the company was unable to raise enough money or enter into a partnership in time and that it has entered into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors. The purpose of the Assignment is to conclude the company’s operations and provide for an orderly liquidation of its assets.
Numbers reported this morning by the NVCA and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP were considerably less optimistic, showing $3.7 million invested over 612 deals. While Dow Jones analysts predicted a “rebound” in the venture investing sector, the NVCA says figures for the full year will most likely reflect a setback to 1996 and 1997 levels of $11 billion to $14 billion. (more…)
Drug maker Oscient Pharmaceuticals Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday, along with its wholly owned subsidiary, Guardian II Acquisition Corp. At the same time, Oscient is selling one of its two drugs, Factive, for more than $5 million.
California mobile advertising firm Nexage Inc. said it closed a first round of funding with $4 million and will move its headquarters from Fremont to Boston.
Nexage said the funding came from Wellesley-based GrandBanks Capital and BlackBerry Partners Fund of Canada.
Delfigo Corp., a Boston developer of authentication software, announced Tuesday the launch of its first product, DSGateway, and the signing of Children’s Hospital Boston as its first customer. (more…)
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