In the past five years, only four universities have spun off 20 or more startups annually. The University of Minnesota ranks among the top four during that time frame.
The U’s Technology Commercialization Office (TechCom for short) focuses on the business prospects of ideas generated by researchers there.
TechCom has been involved with 285 startups since 2006, and nearly half of that growth has been since 2020. Its initiatives range from protecting intellectual property to licensing the right to use an invention to backing startup companies.
“We’re actually generating money and recurring revenue that we can then put into new startups and new research,” said Rick Huebsch, Associate Vice President for Research and Innovation at TechCom. “And we have an ecosystem within the university that we can really help those startups.”
TechCom’s work helps to generate some revenue for the school, but it also helps to burnish the U’s reputation as relevant to the state’s economy and business ecosystem at a time when the Trump Administration has been trying to gut federal funding for research at American universities.
“The university invested a little bit more in the office, brought in some people from the outside, and then really supported the entrepreneurial ecosystem, sort of this entrepreneurial feeling within the faculty,” said Huebsch.
Of course, no one knows which startups will thrive and which will falter. Most of the companies formed out of the University of Minnesota’s business pipeline are acquired by a larger company.
The startups the U has been involved in have gone on to raise $3.4 billion in outside capital and they’ve created 1,500 high-tech jobs. Nearly 70% stay in Minnesota.
Numbers like these support the idea that developing a dynamic and supportive environment for entrepreneurs, venture capital investors and employees hikes the odds for continuing long-term success.
“Having a healthy ecosystem isn’t having one or two people around. It’s having a set of people so that when you need the talent, they’re here. When you need to have people that understand intellectual property, they’re here. When you’re trying to build things like AI, you have people here,” said Huebsch. “It’s kind of that great circle of innovation.”
Full story: University of Minnesota startup generator boosts local economy | MPR News
