U of T amid top five college small business incubators in the earth: UBI World-wide

The University of Toronto has been recognized as one particular of the major five university organization incubators in the environment by UBI World in its hottest globe benchmark review.

In its 2021-2022 examine, UBI International – a Swedish-dependent innovation intelligence organization with additional than 1,000 member corporations – assessed 1895 companies from 90 nations around the world.

The prime corporations had been benchmarked across 21 essential efficiency indicators in opposition to their world wide friends dependent on the price they supply to their innovation ecosystems and consumer startups.

“The UBI ranking is a reinforcement of all the excellent function that so many U of T college students, faculty and alumni business owners have been carrying out,” says Jon French, director of College of Toronto Entrepreneurship, the umbrella group for the incubators, accelerators and entrepreneurship systems throughout U of T’s three campuses. “It’s a recognition of how we fare in opposition to the finest in the planet.”

The ranking is especially notable, French provides, considering the fact that UBI is a single of the only organizations inspecting both economic and social impression in its world-wide assessment of the publish-secondary entrepreneurship area.

“The approach that UBI can take is rather holistic – they measure challenging metrics, such as funding raised and jobs produced, but they also choose a appear at criteria these types of as where the mentor network is coming from and how engaged the university’s alumni are,” French suggests, noting that U of T scored higher on all these types of indicators in the UBI report and requires pleasure in supporting innovators at all phases of their journey – everyone from strategy-stage scholar entrepreneurs to college customers and PhD scientists trying to find to commercialize their function.

Over the past decade, U of T business owners have designed additional than 600 enterprise-backed corporations and secured far more than $2.5 billion in expenditure. U of T Entrepreneurship, for its part, supports existing and aspiring entrepreneurs by furnishing: co-doing the job, meeting and function areas mentorship and advisory supports pitch competitions and prizes and entry to investor networks to secure funding.

map showing locations of all of the incubators on all 3 u of t campuses

U of T’s network of campus acccelerators and incubators in the Higher Toronto Region are currently supporting a lot more than 500 teams functioning on likely startups.

“It is important that our entrepreneurs have a sense of local community – they are surrounded by like-minded men and women who are psyched about innovation and turning concepts and opportunities into companies,” French states. “Across the 10-plus campus accelerators on our three campuses, we at present have above 500 teams that are doing work on initiatives that could turn into corporations.”

UBI’s globe benchmark research is a 3rd-get together assessment, dependent on a comprehensive study, that analyzes the effect and performance of small business incubators and accelerators from 4 sectors: college, community, private and corporate. Its framework for examination was produced in collaboration with an advisory board comprising innovation imagined leaders and market professionals.

Other Canadian universities also ranked extremely in their categories in the UBI report, which include incubators from McGill College, York University, Memorial University and École de technologie supérieure.

Quite a few of the U of T-backed achievement stories flagged for the UBI study stemmed from the university’s toughness in major-edge study fields this sort of as quantum computing, biotech, cleanse tech, sophisticated manufacturing and device mastering. In unique, French details to the new announcement of $40 million in federal funding for U of T startup Xanadu Quantum Systems – an alumnus of the Inventive Destruction Lab (CDL) at the Rotman School of Administration that was launched by previous U of T submit-doctoral physics researcher Christian Weedbrook – and the extra than 150 ventures supported per year by the Health Innovation Hub (H2i).

French observed that U of T’s determination to entrepreneurship is longstanding, with various incubators and accelerators just lately celebrating their 10-yr anniversaries. They incorporate CDL, The Hatchery at the School of Utilized Science & Engineering and the UTEST accelerator.

“And now when we look at the new Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus close to opening on the St. George campus, that is yet again an illustration of U of T doubling down on how critical innovation and entrepreneurship are to the college,” he says.

U of T’s entire world-foremost innovation network – which incorporates U of T Scarborough’s The Hub and The BRIDGE, as properly as U of T Mississauga’s ICUBE – will be showcased during Entrepreneurship 7 days from March 6 to 9, that includes far more than 15 cost-free in-human being, hybrid and virtual public occasions to teach, inspire and rejoice entrepreneurship on campus.

One flagship event returning in-individual for the initially time in three years is the Legitimate Blue Expo on March 9, where extra than 40 U of T startups, accelerators and local community companions will be sharing data on their merchandise and companies.

“We’ll be highlighting groundbreaking organizations in the course of Entrepreneurship Week, such as individuals led by gals founders and startups related to our Black Founders Network,” French claims. “All 3 campuses are represented – it is actually a snapshot of what makes U of T entrepreneurship so distinctive.”

connection