Republished from the BBC

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Entrepreneurship Center is located equidistant from the university’s business school, its media and architecture school and engineering wing, in an area managing director Bill Aulet calls the “demilitarised zone.”

“The geeks can come over and the suits can come over and they can all work together to build a company,” says Mr Aulet.

Inside, it has everything a young entrepreneur might need to start a business: soundproof phone booths for private calls with investors.

Cozy cubicles with whiteboard walls for meetings with business partners.

And boxes of boxes of Ramen noodles for strivers who can’t spare the cash or the time for a proper meal.

In one room, MBA student Birju Shah is hunched over a laptop.

He is the founder of MDBug, a medical transcription and electronic medical records company, and Sugar Crew, a social networking site for people with diabetes.

Next door, three 20-something men in jeans and T-shirts write formulas on the wall.

They run Ubiquitous Energy, a company that has developed a way to make light, flexible solar cells that can conform to almost any material.

Embracing innovation

Outside the building, an entrepreneurial “walk of fame” salutes giants like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, William Hewlett and David Packard, as well as MIT alumni Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Software, and Robert Swanson, founder of Genentech…

Read the whole article at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15342337