Newswise — AUSTIN, Texas – The University of Texas at Austin’s Jon Brumley Texas Ventures Labs (TVL) in the McCombs School of Business has been named the 2015 MBA Roundtable Innovator Award recipient. The award was announced at the annual MBA Roundtable Curricular Innovation Symposium at the Olin Business School at the University of Washington on October 23, 2015.
Launched in 2011, the MBA Roundtable Innovator Award was created to recognize and promote innovative initiatives in MBA education and to acknowledge the institutions that are driving change in the field.
“It’s a real honor to receive this award and the validation that comes with it for our efforts around innovation across our campus and in conjunction with the rich startup ecosystem in Austin,” said Rob Adams, faculty founder and director of TVL. “We look forward to continue innovating as we grow the program and build McCombs entrepreneurial rankings.”
TVL is a cross-campus, interdisciplinary education and research initiative created within the McCombs School of Business to accelerate both student and community startups taking their innovations to market in order to transform graduate students into entreprenuers and business leaders.
TVL supports new venture creation at UT Austin through education and mentoring; market and business plan validation; team-building and networking; and providing direct links to resources and funding.
“While several schools have multi-disciplinary entrepreneurial programs, what sets UT Austin apart from those programs is its success at arranging opportunities for students to present their ideas to potential investors,” said Jay Christiansen-Szalanski, professor of management at the University of Iowa, who served as a judge.
Since 2010, TVL has worked with over 115 startups in a wide range of industries and 41 percent of these companies have gone on to raise over $330 million in funding. The program has worked with over 300 graduate students from the McCombs School of Business, the School of Law, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the College of Natural Sciences, and the College of Pharmacy.
This year’s Innovator Award finalists included Duquesne University, University of California at Berkeley, and University of Houston Downtown.
Founded in 1995, the MBA Roundtable is a collaborative, nonprofit organization that facilitates the exchange of information and resources on MBA curricular innovation. More than 160 business schools from across the world are members of the MBA Roundtable.
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