The university pipeline: Gigot, McCloskey, Innovation Park, the IDEA Center

1998 — 2017 · THE MACHINERY, WITH ITS COUNTS

The second wave had a builder, and the builder was the university: Notre Dame's entrepreneurship machinery went up in dated steps, each documented by the university itself. The Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship was founded in 1998 in the Mendoza College of Business; its founder, Gary Gigot, dates the awakening a year earlier — "Entrepreneurship came into focus at Notre Dame in 1997. Our goal was to 'create a sense of the possible.'" In 2000 the McCloskey Business Plan Competition was founded on a gift from Tom and Bonnie McCloskey; the IDEA Center's own twenty-year accounting counts more than 2,000 teams and 7,000 participants pitching to more than 3,000 judges and mentors, with more than 400,000 dollars in cash and in-kind prizes a year by 2020. In the fall of 2009 the first 29 students entered the ESTEEM master's program — Engineering, Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence — and on October 23, 2009 Innovation Park at Notre Dame opened its doors: a 55,000-square-foot first building, Leighton Hall, on twelve acres on Angela Boulevard south of the campus, built to carry a professor's research the step beyond the laboratory into a company. A second building, the 40,000-square-foot Quinn Hall, followed in late 2017 on a five-million-dollar gift from Thomas and Diane Quinn. The institutions sit in the Notre Dame community development district at the city's edge; this history prints that geography once, plainly, and covers the institutions in full, as it does everywhere the district touches the record.

The pipeline's output is documented in the university's own counts. By August 2016, Innovation Park reported 59 new ventures launched since its opening, 29 companies currently operational, 38 faculty members working there, and fifteen companies that had secured significant outside funding, at 90 percent occupancy. The consolidation came in 2017: the IDEA Center — Innovation, De-Risking and Enterprise Acceleration — launched early that year (announced in 2016), gathering the Gigot Center's work, the ESTEEM program, the technology-transfer office, the McCloskey Competition and Innovation Park's staff into one commercialization engine. Its first full year changed the university's rate: in 2017–18 the center spawned 27 spinouts and startups, a record that nearly matched the 33 companies generated through the university's entire history before that year. The spinouts' geography is the honest part of the record, and the university's counts do not hide it: a Notre Dame company is a company launched, not a company kept. The ones that stayed and grew on South Bend ground are the subjects of the next four entries; the ones that left are counted in the totals above and named in the university's own reporting, and this section does not pretend the ledger balances locally when it does not.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business — the Gigot Center founded 1998; Gary Gigot's account of 1997 and the McCloskey Competition's role (2013 winners' release). nd.edu (news.nd.edu)
2. The IDEA Center, December 15, 2020 — the McCloskey New Venture Competition founded 2000 on the McCloskey gift; twenty-year totals of 2,000 teams, 7,000 participants, 3,000 judges and mentors; more than 400,000 dollars in annual prizes. nd.edu (innovationlab.nd.edu)
3. University of Notre Dame, August 24, 2009 — the ESTEEM program's inaugural 29 students; Innovation Park's 55,000-square-foot building as the commercialization pathway. nd.edu (news.nd.edu)
4. The Notre Dame Observer, August 28, 2009 — Innovation Park's official opening set for October 23, 2009. nd.edu (archives.nd.edu)
5. University of Notre Dame, August 29, 2016 — the Quinn gift and Quinn Hall; Innovation Park's counts since 2009: 59 ventures launched, 29 operational, fifteen with significant outside funding, 90 percent occupancy.
6. University Venturing (Global Corporate Venturing), 2018 — the IDEA Center's 27 spinouts and startups of 2017–18 against 33 in the university's prior history; the center launched in early 2017. globalventuring.com
7. ESTEEM program, University of Notre Dame — the IDEA Center's formation from the ESTEEM program, the technology-transfer office, the McCloskey Competition and Innovation Park; Leighton Hall and Quinn Hall (late 2017). nd.edu (esteem.nd.edu)