Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship at MIT

Learn more about the Center's impact across the world.

We measure progress in achieving our mission through the impact of our programs, which is based on the critical and unique support mechanisms we offer to entrepreneurs. The combination of what we offer and how we deliver is what supports our fellows and the global community of learner-entrepreneurs to achieve positive social and economic transformation through their innovative and impactful ventures.

Today, the center’s position as an important bridge between MIT and global growth markets, focused exclusively on innovationdriven entrepreneurship as a driver of prosperity, makes the Legatum Center uniquely able to continuously innovate its offerings and expand its global impact. 

The survival rate of ventures created by Student Fellows within two years of the fellowship (69%) beats overall survival rates for businesses in the US, which after 10 years is just 33%.

Today,  fellow alumni live across 33+ different countries. Of the active ventures they founded, 68% are focused on global growth markets, with India, Mexico, Kenya, Nigeria, and Brazil at the forefront. Ventures created by student fellows cater to customers worldwide.

Fellows have created ventures in a wide range of sectors, with the largest active ventures focused on healthcare (17%), professional services (13%), financial services (11%), and information technology (10%). 

Many of these ventures have developed innovative technologies or business models that are offering critical services that reach entirely new markets of customers—true market-creating innovations.

An important objective of the Center at MIT is to generate research and ideas that promote the principles of entrepreneurship around the world, and to influence how entrepreneurship in growth markets is understood at MIT and in the world at large.

Thought leadership at the Center is in service of the education of fellows and enabled by the communities that we collaborate with at MIT and in growth markets. We will continue to grow our influence by developing our thought leadership work and demonstrating our commitment to capture state-of-the-art knowledge originating in global growth markets.