Day: February 1, 2017

The Blum Center and Big Ideas@Berkeley is pleased to collaborate on an exciting initiative supported by the State of California to strengthen the UC’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Long recognized as a campus hub for educating and supporting innovators, the Center’s Big Ideas@Berkeley social innovation contest and ecosystem — and more recent Social Innovator OnRamp class — have produced a remarkable record of for-profit and non-profit successes.

Over the past decade, we’ve encouraged, mentored, and supported over 5,000 student innovators, whose efforts have attracted over $150 million in additional funding and valuation after competing in Big Ideas. We are proud of our student innovators and look forward to collaborating and strengthening our ties with the other partners on campus.

According to Sophi Martin, Innovation Director at the Blum Center, “this network will strengthen the ties between already prominent entrepreneurship programs to have even more impact at the local, state, and national level, including coordinated entrepreneur support across the programs and special events to augment the already vibrant innovation ecosystem on the campus.”

The Blum Center is particularly energized to work on enhancing the reach of our social entrepreneurship programs among women and people in underrepresented communities in innovation systems. We are passionate about increasing diversity among founding teams and look forward to continuing to build the unique services available to all innovators.