Headquarters on campus : student entrepreneurship and the ambivalence of incubation

Abstract

Entrepreneurship increasingly takes place in universities, by faculty and students. Whereas the entrepreneurial pursuits of faculty have received significant scholarly attention, those of students have been largely neglected. Our knowledge of students' endeavors is limited to their entrepreneurial performances as alumni. What about their pursuits while still in school? I study student entrepreneurship in the context of student clubs at MIT. As a pioneer in the integration of entrepreneurship in higher education, MIT is a particularly opportune research setting for the study of student entrepreneurship. I discuss the entrepreneurial infrastructure at MIT, the MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem, and introduce student clubs as one of its components. My study focuses on a growing category of clubs that I call venture clubs for their resemblance to entrepreneurial ventures. I describe their characteristics, namely, size, activities, and plans for future growth and, most importantly, funding that primarily sets them apart from what I call traditional clubs. A crucial distinction is that venture clubs are, for the most part, ineligible for funds dedicated to student clubs; rather, they are funded by a variety of MIT centers and programs (e.g. the Public Service Center, MISTI, and the Legatum Center). I discuss the development of the latter sources of funding over the last twenty or so years amidst ambivalent views expressed by representatives of the MIT administration and student government over the relative value venture clubs have for the MIT community. Overall, the support, both monetary and non-monetary, provided to venture clubs signifies openness by the MIT administration and student government to the incubation of student ventures. Drawing from the MIT case, we can better understand the specifics of student entrepreneurship in the context of clubs as well as the complexities it introduces to the administration of institutions of higher education.