And Now For Something Completely Different: How MIT Became the Most Important University in the World

And why Harvard—Harvard!—is scrambling to catch up. 

Boston Magazine’s Chris Vogel writes:  Last November, with great fanfare, Harvard celebrated the opening of its sparkling new $20 million Innovation Lab. A soaring 30,000 square-foot testament to contemporary architecture built right into the heart of the Harvard Business School, the I-Lab represents something profoundly new for the university: a full-throttle effort to transform itself into a leader in the increasingly important world of tech entrepreneurship.....

Tech entrepreneurship is the new sexy. It’s what legions of promising teens and twentysomethings are crazy for today, and Harvard wants in on the action. Sure, the university can claim two of the great tech entrepreneurs of the age, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, as its own. But they had to drop out of Harvard in order to transform their world-changing ideas into reality. “Zuckerberg did Facebook over our dead body,” says Joe Lassiter, the faculty chair of the I-Lab. “The commitment to [entrepreneurship] at this level, and across the university, is quite a new thought.”

True to form, Harvard has been touting the creation of the I-Lab as a revolutionary development, as a stop-the-presses, here-we-come moment of change not just for the university but also the world of higher education. But the thing is, it’s not. Harvard is actually nearly a quarter-century late to the world of tech entrepreneurship, and as it scrambles to get into the game, it’s finding itself in an uncomfortable position, not leading the charge, as it would like to, but desperately playing catch-up to its crosstown rival, MIT….

Read all about it atn http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2012/10/mit-important-university-world-harvard/print/