Harvard HealthLabs is proud to announce its new partnership with Professor Rifat Atun and the Harvard Health System Innovation Lab hosted at the Harvard School of Public Health. Each year's final team will automatically be accepted into the next Harvard H2A cohort joining dozens of fellow startups and a growing community of social impact entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is drawing increasing interest among Harvard students, driven by rising technology salaries and national shifts in the startup economy — though some investors and alumni say the University’s support for founders still lags behind peer institutions.
The recent rise in entrepreneurial engagement at Harvard has been driven less by institutional power than national pressure, according to venture capitalists, students, and alumni involved in the space.
When Josh Lerner first crossed the Charles River to teach at Harvard College, he wasn’t sure anyone would show up.
A longtime Harvard Business School professor and one of the world’s foremost experts on entrepreneurship, Lerner had spent his career teaching MBA students about ideating and funding companies. But when he floated the idea of bringing a class on entrepreneurship to the College during the pandemic, he thought it might flop.
“I was like, ‘I’m absolutely crazy,’” he said. “No one has ever taken a case class at Harvard College before — it’s just going to be completely bizarre.”
