Building Startups and Transformative Innovation in Corporations
CMU’s Corporate Startup Lab (CSL) was founded with the unique belief that startups can exist and thrive anywhere, including in large corporations. Not only can they exist within a company, startups are critical to ensure competitive advantage, growth and even survival for corporations.
Fundamentally, a startup within a company is the same as one inside a garage: a group of entrepreneurs trying to make the world a better place using new ideas and inventions. However, growing an internal startup requires a unique understanding of venture best practices in startup incubation, acceleration and investment and how to apply them to the unique challenges (and advantages) of larger corporations.
CMU’s Corporate Startup Lab, a Swartz Center - Tepper initiative, advances the mission of startup growth within corporations by bringing together leaders and innovative approaches from across venture, academia and industry. CSL delivers this through several multi-disciplinary programs which include education, events, roundtables and sponsored student projects and fellowships.
The CSL team brings significant real-world experience to this mission and all of our programs. The team has founded and invested in startup ventures across multiple stages of growth, built new businesses within existing companies and created nationally ranked accelerators (including corporate accelerators) across the major technology verticals.
CSL Event, AgentAI: Reimagining Work explored new developments, use cases, and trends in Agentic AI was held at the Swartz Center on April 23rd, 2025. Visit the event page to learn more, videos coming soon!
The project course pairs teams of graduate students with companies looking to be more entrepreneurial.
Have an idea you want to explore? Want a fresh perspective to examine how it could be transformative for your company? Join a cohort of peer companies and work with Carnegie Mellon University graduate students to investigate what’s possible over the course of a semester.
Apply here for the Spring 2025 Semester!
CSL Fellows
Launched in Spring 2020, the CSL Fellows is a program with the Corporate Startup Lab that pairs interdisciplinary graduate students with corporate partners to work as “corporate venture and innovation associates.” CSL Fellows spend ten hours a week helping with Deal Sourcing, Due Diligence, Market Mapping, Go-To-Market Strategy, and Portfolio Strategy. It is a paid fellowship that spans a semester of work.
Corporate Startup Week
Hosted annually, our Corporate Startup Week features a nationwide all graduate student Case Competition, the Corporate Entrepreneurship Forum and interative workshops to bring together the brightest and most exciting minds in the field of corporate innovation. Uniquely themed each year, the Forum strives to address expanding trends in topics such as artificial intelligence, robotics, healthcare, fintech, and more.
2024 Corporate Startup Week Dates: October 23-25th
Theme: Accelerating Innovation: Driving Value to Scale
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Register for 2024 Corporate Startup Week Events!
CSL Case Competition
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CSL Staff
Jim Jen
Director, Corporate Startup Lab, Distinguished Service Prof, Entrep.
Tepper School of Business
LinkedIn
Hallie Francis
Academic Program Manager
Tepper School of Business
LinkedIn
Sean Mawhinney
Program Manager
Tepper School of Business
LinkedIn
Sean Ammirati
Co-Founder and Former Director
Tepper School of Business
LinkedIn
Matt Crespi
Co-Founder and Former Instructor
Tepper School of Business
LinkedIn
CSL Tools
CSL strives to create Tools and Resources to jumpstart thinking, planning, and communicating for corporate startup ideas.
We are continuing to grow our tools and resources to support corporate entrepreneurs. We'd love to hear feedback if you try them.
Thank you to our Swartz Center Patrons
Social Media Links
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