A Message from Ed Roberts, Chair

MIT graduates and faculty have been practicing technology-based entrepreneurship since the 1880s. I began studying the phenomenon in 1964, shortly after my friend and colleague Dick Morse inaugurated the New Enterprises course here. Many years passed before I conceived the idea of creating this entrepreneurship center in 1990 as an Institute-wide initiative.

We grew slowly at first, but enough for then-MIT President Charles Vest to say in 1996, "We must not only be the best. We must also serve as a model for others and ensure that, together, we all make a significant global impact in this vital field." To achieve these objectives, the center established the key initial goals of recruiting a critical mass of leading professors and practitioners to build our educational program, and raising major endowment funds to support the teaching, research, and vital student activities.

Over the years we have been able to make significant progress toward these goals. The funding has facilitated the recruiting of world-class educators, and the classes and clubs have helped to attract an increasing number of  top-notch students from across all of MIT. Our tenured and tenure-track faculty are complemented by a large number of senior lecturers, who are proven entrepreneurs and/or venture capitalists in their own right. These practitioners return to the classroom to give back to the very system that helped them to succeed in their careers.

Since its inception over 20 years ago, the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship has been on a growth trajectory, increasing enrollment in entrepreneurship courses, while launching new academic initiatives, such as the MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship & Innovation MBA Track, new student activities, and new faculty research directions. These growth areas have included the global expansion of our programs, including our new efforts in Portugal, our partnerships with Tsinghua University in China and Kyushu University in Japan, as well as our cross-campus outreach, such as the recent set of initiatives in energy entrepreneurship.

As we continue to define new challenges, we invite your participation in meeting them.

Edward B. Roberts

David Sarnoff Professor of Management Technology, MIT Sloan School of Management

Founder and Chair, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship