Michigan State University has placed a strong emphasis on turning the school’s intellectual capacity into viable businesses with such programs as MSU Technologies, The Hatch and MSU Business-CONNECT. Now, the
MSU Foundation will add a new component, Spartan Innovations, to make the process even stronger.
“What typically comes from a university is an invention or discovery,” says Charles Hasemann, executive director of the MSU Innovation Center, “and that becomes a patent, but a patent isn’t a company. You have to have to put together the business plan and the technology plan to move it far enough forward to succeed.
Spartan Innovations will help make that happen as a part of the MSU Innovation Center, together with
MSU Technologies and and Business-CONNECT on the third floor of the Downtown East Lansing building where the Technology Innovation Center is located. The combination of entrepreneurial entities was assembled after a great deal of studying other such entities.
“I don’t know that we’ve invented anything here,” says Hasemann, “but we’ve assembled the best pieces from across the county and put them in the same place, like nowhere else I’ve seen.”
Spartan Innovations is now searching for it’s executive director, and will soon hire two other full time staffers and four to five part time business mentors. The MSU Foundation will fund the entity with a budget of $2 million per year. Additionally, when a private investor decides to invest in one of the Spartan Innovations businesses, the Foundation will match the investment.
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