New businesses have been started by nearly 1 in 5 alumni of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University — which is double the national average, according to a report to be unveiled today at the Mackinac Policy Conference.
The entrepreneurial activity reached every state and more than 100 countries, with nearly half of the businesses launched in Michigan.
Alumni from the 1960s and 1970s had one of the highest rates of entrepreneurship.
And more than half of the businesses were started in fields that were different from the degrees alumni earned.
“This speaks volumes to the education that students are receiving at these world-class universities,” said Jeff Mason, executive director of the University Research Corridor, a U-M, MSU and WSU alliance that commissioned the report. “They are not only gaining knowledge in specific areas of study, but they are also starting their own companies. That speaks to some of the programs, degrees and support systems that the universities are putting in place.”
Mason, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, MSU President Lou Anna Simon and WSU Board of Governors Chairwoman Debbie Dingell will release the report this morning on the porch of Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel.
The research corridor group typically releases studies at the conference that examine the universities’ economic impact on the state, or industry segments. But this report attempts to measure entrepreneurship, another area of progress.
The report is significant because there has been a lot of talk in Michigan, and across the country, about entrepreneurs and now there is data, said WSU President Allan Gilmour, who was reached by phone.
“Every big business started as a small one,” said Gilmour, a former Ford Motor Co. executive who is not at the conference. “If we are going to renew ourselves and grow (in Michigan), we’ve got to be focused on entrepreneurs and put in place the mechanisms to get a small business launched.”
The report, conducted by East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group LLC, was mailed to 1.2 million alumni who graduated from one of the three universities from 1930-2010. More than 40,000 responded.
The universities’ alumni who started businesses were more successful than the average entrepreneur, the report showed. Of the businesses that were started or bought by alumni in 2005, 69 percent were still in operation at the time of the survey, done this past January. That contrasts with the U.S. average of 43 percent, the report showed.
Among the entrepreneurs is Jim Anderson, CEO of Urban Science, a data analytics company in Detroit that works mostly with the automotive industry.
After graduating from WSU with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering, Anderson started the company in 1977 with $1,000. It has since grown to be a $175 million enterprise with 900 employees in offices around the globe.
“What engineering teaches you is that though a lot of things haven’t been done, it doesn’t mean they can’t be done,” Anderson said. “It just means you have to create a way to do it. Wayne State helped me not only with the training but also with the confidence to do that.”
Julie Aigner-Clark is an MSU graduate who in 1997 founded Baby Einstein, an enterprise of video and music products that exposes babies and toddlers to the arts.
She sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company and is working on other businesses.
Even though she never took a business course at MSU, Aigner-Clark said it was her professors who instilled her passion.
“If you love what you do,” Aigner-Clark said, “you can really make a difference.”
Kim Kozlowski, The Detroit News.
