Entrepreneurship Resources 

At the center of this effort is Invent@SU, a six-week summer program that helps transform undergraduate students into inventors as they design, prototype and pitch original devices. Faculty work with students on design and ideation, business fundamentals and professional skills like communication, pitching and teamwork. The program is supported by some of the College’s most notable alumni and industry partners including IEEE Entrepreneurship.

That next step happens at the Blackstone LaunchPad, Syracuse's campus-wide innovation hub located on the main floor of Bird Library. The LaunchPad is Syracuse University's entrepreneurship and innovation hub, connecting the campus ecosystem with a global network that supports and builds communities of aspiring entrepreneurs, inventors, and creators, serving faculty, staff, students, and alumni across all disciplines who are interested in entrepreneurship, venture creation, and innovation careers. Students engaging with the LaunchPad do not need a finished company or even a firm intent to start one, since entrepreneurship is treated first as a mindset, a creative process of exploring ideas, identifying problems and solutions, building teams, and iterating through continuous discovery, which for some leads to venture creation and for others builds critical thinking and leadership skills. In practice, engineering and computer science students can tap into recurring opportunities like the annual 'Cuse Tank pitch competition, the Afropreneurship Celebration and Business Competition, and Orange Innovation Fund grants that help student teams commercialize their ideas, making the LaunchPad a natural continuation point for the ventures born inside Invent@SU.

Housed in the College of Law, the Innovation Law Center offers an interdisciplinary experiential learning program for students interested in the commercial development of new technologies, educating them on the technical, legal, and business aspects of bringing new technologies to market. It works closely with Syracuse's broader innovation ecosystem, including a partnership through which the Innovation Law Center and the New York State Science & Technology Law Center hold office hours with the Blackstone LaunchPad, giving law students a chance to lend their technical expertise to student innovators working to commercialize their ideas.