From educational software to embryonic stem cells, University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, students and staff are well-known for creating new knowledge and businesses— and an ongoing count of university-related startups bears that out.

A campus-based project is soliciting university colleagues and experts across Wisconsin to contribute to refining and building the list of business start-ups —now numbered at more than 250— founded by university faculty, students and staff. The new census can be found here.

Business Professor Anne Miner and INSITE associate director John Surdyk have worked with a doctoral research team to build the census and welcome suggestions about additional firms that may have sprung from work at the university or better data on the firm that are listed.

The new Web site features a visualization of firms created during the past four decades and beyond. The Web site lists more than 250 direct startups — firms launched by university faculty, staff and students within a year of their formal UW-Madison affiliation and/or created around university technology. It also pilots a new list of indirect start-ups created by students, faculty or staff who are no longer formally affiliated with UW-Madison.

“The historical breadth of the startup companies included in the census underscores the university’s role in nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit and helping to create lasting value in Wisconsin communities,” says Wisconsin School of Business Dean Michael Knetter, who serves as special assistant to the chancellor on long-term strategy and development and is lead dean for INSITE.

“At UW-Madison, we make a practice of encouraging students to deepen their abilities to identify opportunities and make them real in all domains, including their academic programs and nonprofits, not just the creation of new businesses,” says Miner.

Student-led startups show wide variety, ranging from personal finance software products and a device that allows farmers to precisely monitor chemicals to more recent efforts to create “greener” vending machines or design creative T-shirts that reflect Wisconsin values.

The Web site’s current data reconcile records from more than 12 independent databases and ongoing consultation with campus officials, faculty, staff, students and business leaders. It builds on important work by Philip Sobocinski and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) but is not restricted to technology links or to formal licensing ties. Support for recent activity on the census comes from UW-Madison’s Office of Corporate Relations, led by Charles Hoslet.

Posted in Faculty-Staff News, Research Excellence