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MBI director: incubator helped launch 200 startups and about 1,800 jobs
Summary
The director of workforce at Mass Biomedical Initiatives (MBI) said the organization has incubated more than 200 life-science startups, created about 1,800 jobs and recorded an estimated $2.2 billion in cumulative regional economic impact since 2000.
The director of workforce for Mass Biomedical Initiatives told hosts that MBI has "incubated over 200 startup companies," created "over 1,800 jobs," and recorded a "cumulative economic impact of over $2,200,000,000," citing those figures as primary measures of the incubator's success.
MBI, founded out of the Worcester Chamber of Commerce in 1984, runs a multi-tier incubation model. The director said MBI measures success by company outcomes and reported a graduation and survival rate "over 80%" for companies five years after leaving the program. She described the incubator as offering wraparound services so scientific founders can focus on research while operational needs are provided at reduced cost.
The director noted that MBI counts successes not only by company formation but by firms that later scale, merge, or enter the private market. She placed those numbers in the context of a decades-long strategy to grow a regional biotech cluster in Central Massachusetts and cited ties to local institutions and later-stage tenant companies as evidence of network effects.
MBI's director also tied the incubators outcomes to the organization's economic-development mission, saying the combination of startups, jobs and facilities helps attract larger employers to the region and strengthens Central Massachusetts' position in the life sciences.
