Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship › Education & Resources › Corporate Startup Lab

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 Project Course

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.

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 Entrepreneurship Forum brings 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 healthcare, artificial intelligence, Fintech, and more.

CSL Case Competition

Since 2022, Corporate Startup Wide as hosted a nationwide, all graduate student Case Competition. CSL challenges students to develop real, viable business solutions to problems in equity in a particiular industry. The Case Competition kicks off in August with team registrations and culuminates in an in person Final Round at Carnegie Mellon, this year on October 23rd, 2024.

CSL Staff

Director, Corporate Startup Lab, Distinguished Service Prof, Entrep.
Tepper School of Business
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Hallie Francis
Academic Program Manager
Tepper School of Business
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Sean Mawhinney
Program Manager
Tepper School of Business
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Sean Ammirati
Co-Founder and Former Director
Tepper School of Business
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Matt Crespi
Co-Founder and Former Instructor
Tepper School of Business
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CSL Tools

CSL Research

CSL AI Case Studies

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.

Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship