Media Releases

U of T’s Creative Destruction Lab Announces Expansion to New York City

October 10, 2017

Toron­to, ON – Today one of the world’s pre­mier seed-stage pro­grams for mas­sive­ly scal­able sci­ence-based ven­tures at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment announced its lat­est expan­sion.

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab will part­ner with the Stern School of Busi­ness at New York Uni­ver­si­ty to estab­lish the first Lab out­side of Cana­da – CDL New York City.

CDL New York City will bring togeth­er, in a nine-month pro­gram, three groups: high­ly suc­cess­ful ser­i­al entre­pre­neurs and angel investors; founders of pre-seed stage star­tups in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy; and Stern fac­ul­ty and MBA stu­dents. Star­tups select­ed for the pro­gram will ben­e­fit from the busi­ness judge­ment of high­ly suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs, new oppor­tu­ni­ties to raise cap­i­tal, and guid­ance from the Lab’s Chief Sci­en­tists – world-renowned NYU fac­ul­ty drawn from sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy dis­ci­plines, includ­ing researchers who’ve suc­cess­ful­ly com­mer­cial­ized their own com­pa­nies. They will also receive busi­ness devel­op­ment sup­port from Stern fac­ul­ty and MBA stu­dents through an affil­i­at­ed expe­ri­en­tial-based CDL course.

“Our mod­el for devel­op­ing mas­sive­ly scal­able sci­ence-based ven­tures has proved suc­cess­ful in Cana­da,” says Ajay Agraw­al, Peter Munk Pro­fes­sor of Entre­pre­neur­ship at the Rot­man School, who is the founder and aca­d­e­m­ic direc­tor of the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab. “And we antic­i­pate it will be sim­i­lar­ly suc­cess­ful for our part­ners at NYU.”

CDL New York will begin accept­ing appli­ca­tions from ear­ly-stage sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy-based star­tups on Jan­u­ary 1, 2018 and expects to admit about 25 ven­tures in the first year.  Appli­cants can be grad­u­ates from uni­ver­si­ties oth­er than NYU. The pro­gram will begin in Sep­tem­ber 2018.

The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab is a seed-stage pro­gram for mas­sive­ly scal­able, sci­ence-based ven­tures. It employs a unique, objec­tives-focused coach­ing process to help founders com­mer­cial­ize advances in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. The Lab also pro­vides expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing to Rot­man MBA stu­dents through year-long cours­es where stu­dents work along­side the Lab’s Fel­lows and ven­ture founders, giv­ing them a unique chance to learn how to eval­u­ate, finance, and man­age tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es.

Grad­u­ates of the Lab include Thalmic Labs (Water­loo), Atom­wise (San Fran­cis­co), Deep Genomics (Toron­to), Nymi (Toron­to), Automat (Mon­tre­al), Kyn­di (Palo Alto), and Heuritech (Paris). The Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab was found­ed in 2012 at the Rot­man School and now has addi­tion­al pro­grams at the UBC Saud­er School of Busi­ness, the Haskayne School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary, HEC Mon­tre­al and Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty. This year the Lab in Toron­to launched a new pro­gram focused on the cre­ation of quan­tum machine learn­ing star­tups.  More infor­ma­tion is avail­able at www.creativedestructionlab.com.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca