Our People
Meet the team behind the Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.
Our Partners
The Center is supported by the following valued sponsors.
Our Professional Advisors
Central to our commitment to fostering innovation is our capacity to provide an extensive array of invaluable resources to support every student and Fellow.
While global prosperity has increased in recent decades, the progress is uneven, with the worst deprivations concentrated in specific parts of the globe. The Center drives more inclusive prosperity by building pathways for the next generation of change agents who, through principled entrepreneurial leadership, will create good jobs, transform systems, and improve lives.
We’re a global community that is based at MIT, drawing on the Institute’s talent, networks, presence, and expertise to inspire and equip those who want to move their ideas toward scalable impact. Our Principles of Operation build on the principles of the broader MIT entrepreneurship community. We build inclusive pathways within MIT and also between MIT and emerging market ecosystems. These not only support entrepreneurs on the ground, they also fuel research and thought leadership.
Building Student Pathways
We offer a portfolio of programs that support students at every stage of their entrepreneurial journey, from those still discovering their path, to those exploring specific market opportunities, to those executing a plan that transforms opportunity into an innovative venture.
- Discovery – For students that seek inspiration, we run a series of events including discovery sessions and ideation workshops. For example, we host faculty-led panels around topics like the UN Sustainable Development Goals and how emerging technologies are impacting frontier markets, as well as the opportunities and obstacles facing entrepreneurs who tackle these complex social challenges.
- Exploration – For students exploring a specific idea for impact we offer travel grants so they can test their customer and product assumptions in the field. We also offer mentorship services through our Entrepreneur in Residence and professional advisory network. We encourage students to participate in student-led club activities as well as any activities we support as part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, like the “Get Good Stuff Done” workshops.
- Execution – Our capstone program—a competitive Fellowship—is reserved for our most promising and committed students. Each year we build a cohort of 20-25 students who are dedicated to building and scaling ventures in the developing world. We provide them with tuition, travel, and prototyping support, as well as access to mentors, special seminars, and other cross-campus resources.
Building Global Pathways
The Center for Development and Entrepreneurship (CDE) provides channels for entrepreneurs across the world to access MIT resources and contribute to our community. Open Mic Africa, for example, is a unique Pan-African tour organized to support local entrepreneurs addressing the continent’s greatest challenges. The MIT Zambezi Prize for Innovation in Financial Inclusion, established in collaboration with The Mastercard Foundation, awards $200K in cash prizes to finalists as well as a tuition-free seat in a weeklong leadership boot camp at MIT Sloan.
We also provide opportunities for CDE alumni to engage in our on-campus activities and global recruitment efforts. These programs enable students, alumni, and faculty to build and strengthen international partnerships and seek new research and business opportunities.
Advancing Research and Thought Leadership
We learn much from our students and alumni as well as from the global entrepreneurship community. Leveraging this valuable knowledge allows us to advance research and thought leadership that can influence entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and other stakeholders.
Our research agenda has three elements: case studies highlighting the experiences of our alumni; support for and coalescence of existing MIT research efforts to understand the impact of innovation and entrepreneurship in the developing world; and financial resources to translate evidence-based insights into actionable recommendations. Also, the Research Assistantship program supports students and faculty who want to develop, share, and implement business and policy tools.
Our Principles of Operation
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Our center’s mission is to improve lives by creating (and learning from) principled leaders and innovation-driven entrepreneurs in the developing world. We empower our entrepreneurs to create and scale businesses that will have significant social impact through their technology or service while also ensuring they develop a sustainable business model that will lead to the creation of good jobs and ethical management practices. We aim to equip our students with the skills, mindset, values and networks to create thousands of local jobs and to increase average local incomes while delivering game-changing solutions that tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. Whether they are increasing life expectancy, providing better education or providing access to financial tools that significantly improve an individual’s productivity at home or in the workplace, we aim for our students’ innovations and management strategies to give people the joy of everyday life and the prospect of being able to build an even better life in the future.
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We work with MIT faculty and partners to incorporate MIT’s standard of excellence and rigor into everything we do. We enroll students with integrity, strong leadership potential, high aspirations, and exceptional intellectual ability. We deliver the highest-quality “entrepreneurship for development” education, advising, and practical experiences. In turn, we shape leaders who will create, redefine, and build cutting-edge products, services and organizations in the developing world.
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We do our utmost to capitalize on and contribute to the Institute’s distinctive intellectual excellence and entrepreneurial culture. We do this by working closely with other MIT departments, labs, centers, groups, alumni and partners to connect students with the best “entrepreneurship for development” curriculum, programming and expertise across the institute.
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“Entrepreneurship for development” requires diversity of opinion, ideas and people. As such, our team, fellowship cohort and programming offerings combine a range of critical perspectives, including on-the-ground perspectives from entrepreneurs in the developing world. We recognize and educate our community on micro-biases where they exist and do our upmost to ensure diversity and high ethical standards in all that we do.
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We foster an adventurous learning community. Each year, we try new activities and partnerships that could enhance our students’ educational experience. If we fail, we learn in the process. When we succeed, we scale rapidly. To ensure we are meeting the needs of our students, we take a rigorous approach to program evaluation and iterate and refine our approach as needed.
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The interests of our student and entrepreneur are paramount. As such, no one in an advising, educational or support role at the Center will take a part of a student company or look for a place on their board. We aim for our students to have a clear understanding of their investment and partnership options before they make a decision on whether to exchange a part of their business for additional funding. Our only goal is the student’s long-term success.
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True to the motto of MIT, in all our program offerings, we operate on a hybrid model that fuses academic and practitioner perspectives.Please note: The Center's Principles of Operation build on the principles of the broader MIT entrepreneurship community, as described in the MIT Sloan mission statement and the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship Principles of Operation.