CIC is an established platform that enhances a location’s innovation infrastructure and creates a physical center of gravity. As a vehicle that transforms an economic development opportunity into a mature innovation hub, CIC’s mission is to fix the world through innovation by creating and managing developing multifaceted communities that support changemakers on their entrepreneurial journeys.
CIC is not an incubator, accelerator, or just a landlord. CIC is an established platform that enhances a location’s innovation infrastructure and creates a physical center of gravity. Founded in 1999 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, CIC houses approximately 2,000 companies in seven locations in the US and Europe. CIC expanded to Miami in 2016, leasing 80,000 square feet in Converge Miami (formerly the University of Miami’s Life Sciences & Technology Park).
Since then, CIC Miami and its community of innovators and creators have helped shape the way Miami does business. We’ve expanded beyond the traditional tourism and real estate initiatives that branded the home of South Beach and have made leaps in the life sciences, education, policy, resilience, impact, and technology sectors. We launched Venture Cafe; established Operation launch, a grant program supporting early-stage entrepreneurs; signed soft-landing partnership agreements with Chile and Argentina, and then a pan-Caribbean agreement; expanded Converge Labs to double the number of shared benches; and we launched the “C the Future” series to bring industry vertical working groups together. We even made our kitchens 98% plastic-free.
“We would not be able to make this next step without the growth that came from team CIC. Thank you for making us feel like hip innovation nerds even though we are a bunch of logistics geeks. Thanks for the facelift on a 50-year-old business. Thanks to each and every one of you for the gifts you have bestowed on us. I’m not going get all Dorothy (The Wiz version) on you all, but as my daughter just told me, CIC will always be home for RFC. And we know there is no other coworking community like it.”
– Jennifer Robertson, Robertson Forwarding Company
Our mission at CIC Miami is to actively create the kinds of intersections and dynamic nodes that will help stakeholders across Miami, the US, and Latin America find common ground, engage meaningfully, and ultimately collaborate.
These have been the underpinning objectives behind every strategy, project, and principle at CIC Miami, and we firmly believe that our impact thus far has been due to the fact that our goals are intricately joined with the city’s appetite for maturity and the region’s hunger for connectivity.
Our focus has been, since the start, to break down silos, build porous walls, redefine inclusive innovation, and always lead by supporting co-leadership with other stakeholders. Our aim remains the creation of a community, not an institution, to engender an inclusive ecosystem, not just build a company. It’s why we were so honored to receive the Beacon Council’s 2019 Entrepreneurship Innovation Award.
CIC’s milestones are our clients’ successes. Together, our clients have raised $162.6M+ in funds and generated 900+ local and global jobs. Our community is 28% female-founded, 37% minority-founded and 27% immigrant-founded. We have also become home to South Florida’s first and only shared wet laboratory.
In addition, CIC orchestrates hundreds of meetings, events, classes, and seminars annually, but most importantly, we create a community of like-minded entrepreneurs of all sizes, stages, and industries who can connect with one another across a broad range of topics.
But these aren’t just milestones for CIC Miami, either; each is a thank-you to our many clients and partners for being a part of the journey and being hellbent on changing our world for the better. Together, we represent the new direction for a thriving, inclusive, innovative Miami.
“Thank you for fostering such a wonderful place for our team to grow and work on stuff. The level of things that have felt achievable since moving to CIC is leagues beyond what we considered when we were trying to forge it on our own and spent the mornings vacuuming termite wings. Looking forward to continuing to build things together!”
– Chris Sopher, WhereBy.Us
