Recent MIT Institutional Broadening and Growth
attached� advice and guidance of experienced mentors. This encourages entrepreneurs to make more educated, thoughtful, and informed decisions, thereby enhancing their chances for success. Typically, VMS builds a long-term relationship that significantly influences the startup. Among the ventures that have been mentored by VMS along the path from idea to operating enterprise, showing the variety of markets and technologies being tackled, are:
to restore mobility after neurological dysfunction. The company created the first portable, wearable robotic device to help stroke patients relearn how to move by enabling them to initiate and control movement of their partially paralyzed arms. Smart Cells, Inc. Making use of a polymer-based dosing technology developed at MIT by its cofounder, SmartCells is developing a once-a-day, self-regulating, injectable formulation for treating diabetes.
Brontes Technologies, Inc. Described previously in the section on the MIT Enterprise Forum, Brontes developed and commercialized a revolutionary single-lens 3D imaging technology, which it applied to the dental imaging market. The company was acquired by 3M in October 2006.
Vela Systems, Inc. This mobile software for field activities in construction and capital projects management leverages capabilities of tablet PCs to deliver construction projects faster, with higher quality and lower risk. Vela now is used on more than 300 projects from Las Vegas to Dubai.
Corestreet, Ltd. Infrastructure and software for security and smart credentials. Gaterocket, Inc. Advances the electronic design automation industry’s ability to develop advanced FPGA semiconductors. Greenfuel Technologies Corporation. Uses algae forms to clean air by recycling carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and turning it into bio-fuels. Interactive Supercomputing, Inc. Software platform delivering interactive parallel processing to the desktop, dramatically speeding up solutions to complex industrial and governmental research and operational problems. Myomo, Inc. Described later in the section on the Deshpande Center, Myomo (previously called Active Joint Brace) is a pioneer in neuro-robotics, a new class of non-invasive medical device technology combining neuroscience and robotics
Table 19 below, showing essentially no perceived importance of VMS to venture founding, is actually quite reassuring from a research reliability perspective. Given that the Venture Mentoring Service was operational only in 2000 and the survey was conducted in 2003, it would have been disturbing if more than one or two respondents cited VMS as an influencing factor. But VMS, its founders, and key leaders were recognized by being awarded the Adolf Monosson Prize for Entrepreneurship Mentoring by the MIT E-Center in 2007.
MIT Deshpande Center On January 3, 2002, MIT announced the creation of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, funded by a magnanimous gift of
Table 19 Importance of Venture Mentoring Service to Venture Founding (from limited sample only) Proportion Rating University Factors as Important in Venture Founding* (percentage) Graduation Decade Venture Mentoring Service
1950s (N=73)
1960s (N=111)
1970s (N=147)
1980s (N=144)
1990s (N=145)
0%
1%
0%
0%
1%
*Respondents could check all relevant categories
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