MIT entrepreneurs: The world’s 10th-largest economy

Living MIT graduates who have started and built for-profit companies do not qualify as a nation. However, if they did, they’d be the world’s 10th largest economy, with gross revenue falling between the GDP of Russia ($2.097 trillion) and India ($1.877 trillion), according to a recently released report.

According to the MIT President L. Rafael Reif

The report confirms what has long been clear: Our community’s passion for doing, making, designing, and building is alive and growing. As we do our part by continuing to foster our students’ natural creativity and energy, it is inspiring to see the potential our alumni hold to extend MIT’s power to do good for the world.

As of 2014, the report estimates, MIT alumni have launched 30,200 active companies, employing roughly 4.6 million people, and generating roughly $1.9 trillion in annual revenues. An update to a previous report authored in 2009, the new report outlines key entrepreneurial trends, such as the declining age of entrepreneurs, and alumni contributions to company growth and innovation, such as patents filed. Other key results for entrepreneurial impact and trends are:

• 25% of alumni have founded companies, with more than 40% of these labeled as serial entrepreneurs
• 11% of alumni who have graduated in the 2010s have already founded companies, compared with 8% who founded companies within five years of graduating in the 1990s, and 4% in the 1960s
• 80% of alumni-founded companies have survived five or more years, while 70% have survived 10 years. (Across the U.S., roughly 50% of all new companies last five years, while only 35% last 10 years.)
• MIT entrepreneurs favor the East and West coasts: More than 30% of all the surveyed companies are located in Massachusetts, with 8% in Cambridge; 20% are located in California. Approximately 23% operate in other countries.

Read more

• MIT Innovation@Work Block: MIT entrepreneurs: The world’s 10th-largest economy
• Download the report: Entrepreneurship and Innovation at MIT – Continuing Global Growth and Impact