Columbia Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Design (“Columbia Entrepreneurship”) was founded in the summer of 2013 at the direction of University President Lee C. Bollinger and the University Board of Trustees to support, invigorate, accelerate, and motivate the Columbia community’s programs and culture around innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
At the very heart of Columbia Entrepreneurship’s mandate is to 1) connect and empower the innovation nodes that exist through each of Columbia’s schools, and 2) create new opportunities for cross-disciplinary innovation resources, programs, and classes for students, faculty, and alumni of the University.
You will see this in our work at Columbia Startup Lab Morningside (for current students) and Columbia Startup Lab SoHo (for alumni), where founders can incubate their early stage companies; at the #StartupColumbia Venture Competition, which gives out $300,000 in cash prizes for Columbia entrepreneurs; in our work at the Design Studio, which teaches problem-solving through empathy and design thinking; and in the Collaboratory, where we work with faculty to create interdisciplinary data literacy classes. In recognition that innovation is best when fueled by diverse backgrounds and disciplines, we also assist Columbia’s schools in cross-listing courses to help open up these classes to students across the University.
We are grateful for the extraordinary encouragement from the President’s and Provost’s offices, the leadership from our University Trustees, the guidance from our Advisory Council, and the partnerships we’ve formed with School Deans and faculties, our extraordinary alumni, and our amazing students.
You can learn more about how to get involved in the Columbia entrepreneurship ecosystem here.