Best in Entrepreneurial Readiness

Entrepreneurial readiness measures how effectively an institution prepares and supports researchers to pursue biomedical innovation and commercialization. Research capabilities provide the science, and market translation gets it to the world, but the step between those two depends on whether researchers are trained, resourced, and encouraged to think about their work in terms of therapeutic potential and commercial application.

The Cure Innovation Index evaluates entrepreneurial readiness by looking at two things: the formal programs an institution offers to support commercialization, and how actively its faculty and trainees participate in entrepreneurial activity.

On the programmatic side, the Index considers whether an institution offers formal biomedical entrepreneurship training, a joint MD/PhD Medical Science Training Program, or a joint business and medical curriculum such as an MD/MBA or related degree. These programs signal that an institution treats translation as something worth teaching, not just something that happens to occur when the right faculty member has the right idea.

"Entrepreneurial readiness needs to be an essential part of a research institution's make up," said Erik Lium, PhD, President and Chief Commercial Innovation Officer, Mount Sinai Health System. "Putting resources behind entrepreneur training and capabilities to help foster a culture of startups, entrepreneurship, and translation is important in today's higher education."

But programs on paper only matter if people use them. The Index also looks at the ratio of biomedical postdocs and graduate students to researchers, which captures how deeply trainees are embedded in the research enterprise, and at whether an institution has a biomedical faculty incubator or an entrepreneur in residence program. These structures give faculty a practical path from discovery to venture rather than leaving them to figure it out on their own.

Irene Abrams, Senior Vice President of Research Innovation at Boston Children's Hospital, pointed to less obvious factors that shape an institution's entrepreneurial culture, such as whether the conflict-of-interest policy is reasonable enough for faculty to start companies, and whether the technology transfer office has real authority to enter into contracts. She also emphasized the role of peer influence. "Faculty learn from one another," she said. "Having at least one role model helps faculty imagine that they also could be successful at entrepreneurship."

The environment surrounding an institution matters too. "The environment makes a huge difference in entrepreneurial readiness, and the support and teaching of what it takes to be entrepreneurial," said Victor Dzau, MD, PhD, President of the National Academy of Medicine. He noted that an institution's entrepreneurial culture and geography can be synergistic, given that investment opportunities tend to concentrate in major hubs like Silicon Valley and Cambridge, MA. Growing the biomedical ecosystem, he said, requires concerted efforts to attract entrepreneurship and innovation beyond those established centers.

With those measures in mind, here are the 20 institutions that scored highest in entrepreneurial readiness.

Top Universities

1. Harvard University

2. University of Pennsylvania

3. Washington University in St. Louis

4. Emory University

5. Stanford University

6. Case Western Reserve University

7. University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio

8. Boston University

9. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

10. University of Pittsburgh

Top Institutes and Centers

1. Mayo Clinic

2. Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

3. Mass General Brigham

4. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

5. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

6. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

7. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

8. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

9. Scripps Research Institute

10. La Jolla Institute for Immunology

11. Seattle Children's Hospital

12. Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

13. The Methodist Hospital Research Institute

14. Gladstone Institutes

15. National Jewish Health

16. Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation

17. Henry Ford Hospital