Cambridge Innovation Center is an American real estate services company which bills itself as a "community of entrepreneurs". The company was founded in 1999 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates Timothy Rowe and Andrew Olmsted. HB Reavis, headquartered in Luxembourg, has given funding of $58 million to Cambridge Innovation Center to expand its coworking spaces globally. CIC campuses are essentially a mix of startups, “corporate innovation spin-outs,” and VC funds, with tenants given access to desks, meeting rooms, labs, and more. "CIC also houses innovation globalization programs for more than a dozen governments including Canada, China, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands"
History
CIC was founded in 1999 in at 238 Main St in Kendall Square. In April 2001 it grew to across the street at One Broadway. An unusual office design garnered its new office the Honor Award for Design Excellence from the Boston Society of Architects for 2000. It continued to grow, doubling in size twice by 2004, reaching and 75 companies. In December 2006, a major transformer fire in an NSTAR electrical vault in the basement of One Broadway led to the building and the CIC being closed for 5 weeks. The 150 companies located in the building at that time, including Google, had to be relocated on an emergency basis in space provided by MIT. In August 2008, CIC housed 170 companies, and was recognized as a phenomenon of sorts in a Boston Globe feature article. Massachusetts GovernorDeval Patrick visited Cambridge Innovation Center in January 2009., CIC had grown to over 500 companies. In May 2013, CIC announced its first expansion outside of Massachusetts. CIC St. Louis anticipates being able to house up to 100 companies when fully occupied. CIC is the first innovation center to have opened. Since its creation, private companies and local governments are promoting the creation of their own version of an innovation center. Innovation centers can be local development strategies through public-private partnerships for cities to foster innovation district. In February 2018, the CIC signed a lease for in the heart of Kendall Square at the corner of Broadway and Main. The lease comes with a large street facing video screen and the location is a short distance from the Kendall/MIT station Red Line subway.
Famous companies based at CIC
Google set up its New England headquarters in CIC in 2005. The first person to move in was Android co-founder Rich Miner. It grew there until, at approximately 175 people and no longer able to fit, it relocated a block away.
Maven Technologies, the company that became a Yahoo subsidiary and the kernel of its operations in Cambridge, also began at CIC.
Great Point Energy, while based at Cambridge Innovation Center in 2007, raised $103M for its coal gasification technology in what was at the time one of the largest investments in the history of cleantech.
HubSpot was a tenant of CIC from 2006 to 2010. Former Silicon Valley writer Dan Lyons used his experiences working at HubSpot in CIC as material for the show.
Trivia
In 2008, Cambridge Innovation Center operated one of the first bikeshare programs in the Boston area.
