How W. P. Carey Became A Top Incubator For Entrepreneurs

From side hustles to scalable ventures, entrepreneurship at ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business takes many forms, which has led to national recognition. In fact, the school’s holistic approach to supporting student founders and innovators has made it a standout in business education, earning the Best in Class: Incubator Award from Poets&Quants.

This award recognizes W. P. Carey’s excellence in fostering an environment where students feel encouraged to pursue their entrepreneurial ideas and have the resources and support they need to succeed, whatever their goals are.

Jared Byrne, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and New Business Design at W. P. Carey, accepted the award on the school’s behalf, and he was excited about what this award signifies for W. P. Carey and business education as a whole in the current climate.

“In large part, it’s exciting because of the environment that we’re in,” he says. “There’s a lot of pushback on universities and what value they’re adding to society and to their students, so it’s an exciting time to get an award centered around entrepreneurship. In some ways, we’re doing things differently, and we’re looking at entrepreneurship differently.”

One way of looking at entrepreneurship differently is that W. P. Carey considers it a “fundamental tool for business education,” as Byrne says. From marketing to data analysis, strategy, supply chain management, and much more, growing a business exposes students to the different disciplines within the school all at once, and in a hands-on way.

Jye-Ling Lu graduated from W. P. Carey’s Full-time MBA program in 2024 and was growing her sportswear brand while in school. She says one of the most valuable parts of her experience is how she was able to take classroom learnings and apply them in real life.

“I felt like every class I took, I could apply into my business,” Lu says. “There would be an example or new knowledge taught by the professor, and I would relate it to my business saying, ‘I wish I had known this one better or sooner so I could have used it.'”

The emphasis is placed on building students’ abilities to analyze a market and identify how to add value to a situation. “If we train students how to create value, then they’re always going to be adding value,” says Byrne. “Whether they’re in a corporation moving forward, or whether they’re building their own businesses and growing them or scaling them and selling them.”

This philosophy extends beyond the classroom, and endeavors like the Center for Entrepreneurship and New Business Design allow individuals across ASU to work with the team at W. P. Carey on their entrepreneurial ventures and aspirations.

“We’re at a public university that’s measured by whom we include, not exclude, and so everything we do is try and lower barriers for people to participate,” says Byrne. “So if you want to participate in entrepreneurship, whether that’s being a founder, a co-founder, or a first employee, if you want to participate in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the center’s job is to lower the barriers to that.”

The center offers resources such as training, networking events, mentorship, and funding programs. No matter how much experience someone has with running a business, or where they are in the entrepreneurial process, the center has a place for them and the support they need.

Byrne adds, “We want to give some form of support so that the student has the time and the resources to participate and become an entrepreneur.”

Recent graduate Santino Sciullo began his venture, So Burr Brands, during his first semester in W. P. Carey’s Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation program, taking advantage of the resources and expertise available to him in and out of the classroom.

“Building So Burr Brands during my first semester, and operationalizing it during the spring semester was very fulfilling,” says Sciullo. “It taught me what goes into a product launch, and, ultimately, the thought processes needed to solve interesting problems.”

One of the biggest advantages of a university being an incubator, according to Byrne, is the research component. “Entrepreneurs have to do research,” he says. “They do a lot of research, and there’s no place on the planet that is better at understanding how to do effective research than a university.” 

“Entrepreneurs have to create hypotheses, and they make assumptions, and then they go out and they test those assumptions. Well, there’s no institution in the world that does better at hypothesis testing than a university does,” Byrne adds.

By incorporating entrepreneurship into the educational environment, where students are also mastering skills in research, data analysis, and testing, W. P. Carey is creating entrepreneurs who are more well-rounded and capable.

The mindset at W. P. Carey is different from other entrepreneurial settings which may focus more on building scalable ventures. The approach incorporates the school’s values of inclusion and personability to create an incubation environment that nurtures all prospective entrepreneurs and their ideas.

“My dream is for people to see that entrepreneurship is personal,” says Byrne. “It’s not some linear process that everybody does the exact same. It’s a unique process for every individual, based on their background and based on their skills and their attributes.”

Students like Latifa Alneyadi, who came to ASU through a global partnership with Khalifa University in the UAE, have seen this firsthand, which not only made their experience at the school more enjoyable, but made them better entrepreneurs.

“The W. P. Carey community is incredibly diverse and welcoming to individuals from all industries and backgrounds,” says Alneyadi. “At the same time, we’re encouraged to pursue ventures that align with our personal goals, making the learning journey both professional and deeply meaningful.”

Learn more about how W. P. Carey can help you turn your ideas into action.

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The W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University is the largest business school in the United States, with more than 23,000 undergraduate and graduate students — and 130,000+ alumni around the world. There are more than 60 ways to earn a W. P. Carey degree, including our first-of-its-kind master’s in AI in business. Entrepreneurship and innovation are key to our curriculum and your experience.

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