Entrepreneurship and MIT have become a classic pairing, with a storyline that seems to write itself: A researcher develops a brilliant innovation in the lab, spins out a company, and brings a product to market that saves lives or improves society. It happens, sure ' but long-term startup success is far from guaranteed. That's the challenge that prompted the launch of the MIT Kavanaugh Translational Fellows Program a decade ago, giving scholars who want to turn academic research into solutions to pressing challenges the time, tools, and business training to improve their chances of success. 'MIT has this world-class research facility and faculty and everything, but it also has world-class entrepreneurial programs,' says Nick Diaco, an MIT postdoc and 2025 Kavanaugh Fellow, in a new video about the program. 'You really need both if you actually want to take an idea from the lab and put it into the real world and put it into situations where it's actually affecting people's lives.' The program's focus reflects a fundamental challenge for academic innovators: developing a promising technology is only the beginning. Turning it into a viable business requires making difficult decisions about customers, markets, financing, and other factors that may fall outside a typical researcher's expertise....

Two giants of artificial intelligence, OpenAI and Anthropic, plan to go public in the next year or so, floating stocks that are expected to rocket some of their employees into the ranks of the ultra-wealthy. Some analysts have projected that Anthropic's initial public offering (IPO) might bring in US$2 trillion, the largest in history. OpenAI is reportedly targeting $1.4 trillion for its IPO, although the company delayed going public until 2027 amid renewed concerns about AI safety. If these IPOs go as planned, the effects might extend well beyond sales of superyachts, mansions and private jets. The windfall would probably also add to the flurry of private investments and philanthropic donations from tech-savvy entrepreneurs who are eager to jump-start their favoured areas of biomedical research, such as cancer biology, longevity and reproductive technologies. 'It's a very exciting time,' says Andrew Lo, who studies entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. 'We're going to see the creative energy of the tech sector unlocked.'...

Howard Stevenson transformed entrepreneurship from a study of founders' personalities and business formation into a way of managing: pursuing opportunity beyond the resources currently controlled. His approach emphasized testing ideas, committing resources in stages, assembling teams, and rewarding value creation'practices that could benefit organizations of any size. His ideas reshaped business education and influenced generations of entrepreneurs and managers around the world....

On the first day of class 16.445J/STS.468J (Entrepreneurship in Aerospace and Mobility Systems), David Mindell, MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics (AeroAstro) and the Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, asked his students to take a look at an image of a textbook. The cover featured a bright and inspiring collage of rockets, planets, and all manner of futuristic air- and spacecraft. The title: 'Entrepreneurship in Aerospace: A Guide for Founders and Investors.' 'This is the most up-to-date guide on the topic,' Mindell said, describing the book's treatment of the concepts and procedures involved in innovating in aerospace, an industry experiencing a renaissance of entrepreneurship led by venture-backed startups and rapid innovation, and one that, whether or not we realize it, we all depend on every day. After conducting over 50 interviews with founders, operators, engineers, and investors across the aerospace industry, the class pulled it off. The 100-page industry report, titled 'Entrepreneurship in Aerospace,' provides comprehensive insight into what it actually takes to build an aerospace venture today, and makes predictions about what is needed in the near future....