New York City’s Academic Institutions: A Stunning Engine of Innovation

Many of us who have the distinct pleasure to live and work in New York’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and/or Silicon Alley have no inkling of the staggering role its local academic institutions play in the realm of innovation, licensing, and start-up formation. I can tell you that until approximately six years ago I had no idea of the sheer scale of it all.  It  is certainly true that the majority of this output is in the realm of health sciences/biotech, but much is being done to stimulate entrepreneurship from engineering, computer science departments, the undergraduate ranks and the business schools.  (More on this in subsequent posts).

Just look at these hard numbers:

Annual Research Funds:                                       $1872 million

Annual  Inventions:                                                 643

Annual New Licenses and Options:                      193

Total Active Revenue Generating Agreements: 566

Annual Gross Licensing Revenue:                       $509 million

Annual Number of Start-up Companies:             20

Number of Start-up Companies to Date:             188

Source: New York Academic Consortium (NYAC)

Comments

[David K. Park]

Fred Wilson did a talk several weeks ago on what makes the NYC startup sector so special. Here's the talk on slideshare: http://bit.ly/xmtux. He had a nice comparison of seed and early tech deals from SV and SA from 1995 to the present, and showed the dramatic increase in SA. Would have been interesting to see a similar comparison between SV and SA but focused on the role of academic institutions. I guess Boston and the 128 corridor should be included as well.

[Ming Jack Po]

Are there any statistics on gross revenue of these startup companies? I feel like the revenues of these startups pale in comparison to the west coast, but I could be completely wrong.

[Dave Lerner]

Ming- Check out the AUTM licensing survey from 2007. http://bit.ly/1ed965 You will see that East Coast schools do rather well, in fact, annual licensing revenues are dramatically higher historically, most likely as a result of blockbuster drugs.

[Jonathan Sherry]

Hi David - Enjoy the blog. In regards to your spotlight on how NYC's academic institutions are helping to foster an entrepreneurial environment in NYC, you should check out NYU/Poly's Incubator at 160 Varick (coverage in the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8290555.stm ; coverage in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/realestate/commercial/11incubator.html ).

I'm actually a Columbia Business School alum who co-founded an information services company called ChubbyBrain. We've been sitting in the incubator, which is subsidized by NYU/Poly, the City and Trinity Real Estate, since this past summer. It's a very real example of how the city and academia are coming together to get small business off the ground in our area.

[Dave Lerner]

this incubator is great. I am in touch with the guys running it all the time... much needed!