Business Formation

Entrepreneurs are Indiana’s biggest cash crop. IU provides ideal conditions for cultivating entrepreneurs. Our top-ranked entrepreneurship programs and flourishing business incubators are yielding startups in high-growth fields, and new jobs are cropping up around the state.

Seed Capital

Indiana’s business community can tap into IU’s resources for assistance with business formation, strategic planning, and acquisition of venture capital. The Office of Engagement can connect you to experts in your area of business, or direct you to one of our business incubators so you can grow your business.

• Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation provides information and resources for writing business plans, attracting investors, and managing your business.
• IU Emerging Technologies Center offers support to life sciences, biotechnology, and bioinformatics companies in Indiana.
• IU Research & Technology Corporation (IURTC) helps Indiana companies develop commercially viable technologies.
• The Indiana Life and Health Sciences Initiative focuses specifically on connecting IU’s expertise in medical and scientific research to regional economies to create and support life sciences companies.

IU has partnerships with the Inventrek Technology Park in Kokomo, the Uptown Innovation Center in Richmond, and the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center in Fort Wayne.

Land of Opportunity

Site locators in the United States and around the world have discovered that Indiana is a place to thrive.

• Only four other states have an export economy growing at a faster rate than ours.
• Only three other states have a stronger record in pharmaceutical exports, the fastest growing sector of Indiana’s international economy.
• Indiana is the nation’s No. 6 "A" ranking manufacturing state. One in every six of these manufacturing jobs is devoted to Hoosier exports, which have now grown to a $22.6 billion business.
• Indiana now has the sixth lowest business costs in the nation.
• Indiana ranks 20th in the 2008 Small Business Survival Index and Indiana had one of the top 100 fastest-growing companies of 2008, Steel Dyamics (Fort Wayne), ranked 51st.

Facts At-A-Glance

• U.S. News & World Report ranked the Kelley School of Business No. 2 for its undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship programs. The Kelley School’s Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is one of the world’s largest and most renowned entrepreneurship facilities in the nation.
• The IU Emerging Technologies Center in downtown Indianapolis has generated several fledging companies and more than 370 high-tech jobs.
• The IU Research and Technology Corporation helped form five new businesses in 2007, and two new companies in 2008.