Michigan State University has a long history of successful partnerships with the business community and a hard-earned reputation for creatively applying knowledge to real-world problems. A number of MSU centers provide resources that support business development.

As a result of a partnership between the city of East Lansing, MSU and the East Lansing Downtown Development Authority, the offices of the MSU Innovation Center – which includes MSU Technologies (the university’s technology transfer unit), MSU Business-CONNECT (the university’s ‘front door’ for business relationships), and Spartan Innovations (the university’s business creation unit) – are now located in the city’s SmartZone space adjacent to the East Lansing Technology Innovation Center. The facility also houses The Hatch, which provides coworking space for prospective, creative, and innovative college entrepreneurs ready to develop their business ideas.

The MSU Product Center Food-Ag-Bio was established in spring 2003 with funds from the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station (now known as AgBioResearch) and Michigan State University Extension to improve economic opportunities in the Michigan agriculture, food and natural resource sectors. The business experts in the center work with any and all entrepreneurs or existing businesses that are interested in pursuing new ventures, either new businesses or new products and services, related to agriculture, food, bioeconomy or natural resource industries.

The MSU Bioeconomy Institute, provides chemical pilot plant scale-up production and conducts sponsored research and testing for both for-profit and not-for-profit entities of all sizes. It also offers business incubation opportunities and extensive laboratory space rental, as well as educational programming and training.