Carnegie Mellon University is ramping up its efforts to turn out high-performing, innovative companies.
Greenlighting Startups is an initiative that is boosting CMU’s already impressive track record by giving more entrepreneurs an opportunity to launch sustainable businesses. Just how successful has the university been? Since 2004, CMU has doubled the number of startups and companies created and now stands as one of the fastest growing entrepreneurial institutions in the U.S.
And there’s more. CMU has helped to create more than 200 new companies that have added about 9,000 new jobs. Statewide, CMU spinouts represent 34 percent of the total companies created in the last five years.
“Carnegie Mellon has always attracted faculty and students with the best ideas and innovations,” said Rick McCullough, vice president of research at Carnegie Mellon. “The initiative is part of the entrepreneurial culture at CMU that helps to take those innovations and make them a reality in the marketplace, creating companies and jobs in the process.”
Greenlighting unifies the efforts of five of the universities most successful programs for entrepreneurs: the Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise Creation (CTTEC); the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship; Project Olympus; Quality of Life Technology Foundry; and the Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund (OFEF).
The key behind the program is an innovative and successful philosophy that inspires and motivates students and professors, McCullough adds. CMU espouses a “Five Percent, Go in Peace” model, a first-of-its-kind approach to spinning out companies that simplifies the process and negotiations, freeing entrepreneurs to do what they do best.
It’s an approach that’s working. Not only does CMU rank first in the country among schools without a medical school in the number of startup companies created per research dollar spent since 2007, but CMU spinouts have attracted national attention and achieved national prominence, including reCAPTCHA, Dynamics and Plextronics.
Source: Rick McCullough, Greenlighting Startups
Writer: Deb Smit
For more of Pittsburgh’s latest and greatest, sign up here to receive Pop City for free in your inbox every week.