Illinois universities spawn 978 businesses in five years

Illinois’s universities have founded a total of 978 student and faculty-led businesses over the past five academic years, according to a paper from the Illinois Science and Technology (IST) Coalition.
The total, covering the academic years from 2013-2014 through 2017-2018, is up 153% on the 386 companies formed in the preceding five-year period.
IST Coalition’s report – entitled the 2019 University Entrepreneurship Index – found 65.5% of the businesses remain active, while 32.8% are defunct and 1.6% have been acquired.
Companies formed on university-owned intellectual property have been particularly resilient, with 78.1% of spinouts remaining in operation against just 45.9% of the other startups.
Almost three-quarters of the businesses to have received funding are located in Illinois, though nearly 62.5% of recipients generating more than $10m were located out of state. In all, startups founded from Illinois’s academic sector amassed approximately $1.2bn in funding over the five years – the first time the metric has surpassed the $1bn mark.
The report claimed university measures to increase inclusion and diversity had brought dividends, with approximately 33% of the business recorded possessing at least one female founder, while an estimated 37% featured one or more foreign-born founders.
In 2017, Illinois universities were able to generate $287m in licensing revenue, the fourth-greatest sum of any state in the US, the report said. Universities agreed 173 licensing and option agreements in 2017, the 18^th most nationwide, processing 250 patents in addition to 748 invention disclosures.
Illinois’s research was supported by $52.9m in grant funding in 2017 from the US government’s Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs, positioning the state 13^th in the US, though its share of the awards has stalled year-on-year, rising 1.7% annually since 2013 compared with the 4% national average.