Principal Investigator Dame Fiona Murray
Co-investigators Sorin Grama , Anna M Omura , Kavan O'Connor
Project Website http://legatum.mit.edu/
Project Start Date September 2007
The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship was founded on the belief that economic progress and good governance in low-income countries emerge from entrepreneurship and innovations that empower ordinary citizens.
The Center was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007 through a structured gift of $50 million from Legatum, a global investment firm.
The Center administers programs and convenes events that promote and shape discourse on bottom-up development. Led by Iqbal Z. Quadir, founder of Grameenphone and Emergence BioEnergy, the Center runs a highly competitive fellowship program for MIT graduate students who intend to launch enterprises in low-income countries. In addition, the Center convenes an annual conference, hosts lectures, and supports teams of enterprising men and women at MIT who are passionate about starting viable businesses in the developing world.
Legatum is a global investment organisation headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Founded in 2006, Legatum draws on a twenty-year heritage of investment excellence in the global capital markets, allocating capital to support the development of companies, governments and markets across a wide range of sectors and geographies.
In addition to investing in global capital markets, Legatum is also committed to promoting sustainable human development and the expansion of knowledge and best practice across the globe.
Transformative innovation, entrepreneurial leadership and grassroots development are the forces that drive the Legatum Center’s programs, combining to create a solid platform for sustainable development and prosperity. By promoting enterprises that engage local human resources, our programs encourage broad-spectrum innovation and competition in the very places where development is most urgently needed.
The Legatum Center’s programs aim to commercialize new technologies, while exploring the application of practical, enterprise-based solutions to address deep-rooted problems in low-income countries. These programs include:
Fellowships -- The Legatum Center administers a competitive fellowship program for incoming and current MIT graduate students, across all academic and professional disciplines, who demonstrate the potential to create innovative, sustainable, for-profit enterprises that promote prosperity in low-income countries and who are committed to implementing their business plans upon graduation.
Grants -- The Legatum Center provides seed grants to teams of MIT students who are working on innovative, sustainable projects in low-income countries. These grants fund market research, travel, project scoping, and pilot studies.
Conferences -- The Legatum Center’s annual conference brings together thought-leaders and entrepreneurs from around the globe to discuss international development, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Lecture Series -- As part of its ongoing Lecture Series, the Legatum Center invites entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, intellectuals and public officials to MIT to share their experiences and ideas.
Affiliates -- In addition to its core team, the Legatum Center leverages the expertise and experience of entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers through its affiliates program.