The Harvard Innovation Labs has received the highest honors in the 2023 Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Center Awards for “Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation.”
Headquartered at the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship in Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, GCEC is an academic organization for university-based entrepreneurship programs. The GCEC membership includes 300 university centers ranging in age from well-established and nationally ranked to new and emerging programs. The annual GCEC Awards are designed to showcase and celebrate the very best of university entrepreneurship. In 2023, 12 universities were awarded top honors in nine categories, and several others were commended.
“Since the fall of 2011, the Harvard Innovation Labs ecosystem has supported more than 12,000 students who have started more than 4,000 ventures across dozens of industries, from enterprise technology to life sciences, education, and social impact,” said Matt Segneri, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs. “This recognition reflects the extraordinary work so many Harvard students and alumni — with support from our faculty, staff, and expert community — are doing to create solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.”
The Harvard Innovation Labs was the sole winner in the 2023 GCEC Awards category of “Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation,” which honors a center for supporting the process of launching and accelerating university-affiliated startups. During the 2022-2023 academic year, a record number of students received support from the Harvard Innovation Labs, with more than 2,000 students from across the University working on more than 900 ventures. Additionally, the Harvard Innovation Labs reported that more than 3,000 i-lab ventures have collectively raised over $7 billion in venture capital for their businesses since the university innovation center was founded.
