Students have the opportunity to learn about tech start ups from the Viterbi Student Innovation Institute within the Viterbi School of Engineering and take courses from the  Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business, or combine the two! There are minors to choose from or you can take a combination of classes that interest you.

The Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business is the nation’s oldest integrated entrepreneurship program. Consistently ranked among the top programs in the United States and abroad, the Greif Center was named #3 by US News & World Report in its Best Business Schools 2016 rankings, and #4 worldwide by the Financial Times in 2015. With more than 68 courses taught by 27 professors and clinical practitioners, the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies is a leader in entrepreneurship education and research.

Viterbi Start Up Garage

The Startup Garage is a 6 month venture incubator program that includes $20K in capital in exchange for 4% equity, hands on mentoring and coaching, access to an amazing network of investors, access to the resources of the Viterbi School of Engineering, and working space for the first 6 months of your venture.  All students can apply with their ideas and companies to be apart of the program. Prior Garage companies have raised over $8+Mil in investment capital!

Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition

MEPC is designed to support both the idea and the innovator through a combination of mentoring by seasoned investors and business professionals, entrepreneurial educational sessions developed in conjunction with the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurship at USC that features a $50K grand prize!  The MEPC’s goal is to both make engineering innovators more business-savvy while at the same time to empower them with refined business plans that define an effective go-to-market strategy for their ideas and inventions.

Min Family Engineering Social Entrepreneurship Challenge

This challenge is a competition that provides USC students with the opportunity to use innovations in engineering and technology to develop sustainable and effective solutions to global problems and to positively affect the greater global society.  In particular, it aims to address the development of solutions to problems and challenges faced by underprivileged parts of our society or in underdeveloped countries worldwide.  The first place winner wins $15k in prize money along with mentor-ship and legal aid.

Student Organizations build the foundation of the start up culture among Viterbi undergrads at USC. All of the innovation focused student organizations have a physical home in the Blackstone Launch Pad where they get to meet, collaborate and grow together. Student Organizations put on school wide events, showcases, and bring in incredible speakers (including Elon Musk) – and all of it is completely student led. If you want a chance to talk to Elon Musk, consider joining LavaLab and help out with their speaker series committee.  If you want to work at a start up for an internship or a full time career, Spark SC puts on a fall and spring start up career fair. If you want to blend art, animation and technology, Corpus Callosum does just that every semester with one gropu even creating a VR video game. If you want to use your passion for innovation to create social change, Design for America does just that.

With 1/3 of Viterbi affiliated student organizations having a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship, there’s an organization to help you develop and grow your idea, or even just learn what this crazy start up craze is all about! Learn more about some of the organizations and what they’re doing below.

Did you know that Southern California graduates the largest number of engineering and computer science graduate students in the country?

It’s true — more than Bay Area, more than Boston, more than any other city or region in the United States. This tremendous talent pool is fueling the explosion in the innovation ecosystem in our area, also known as Silicon Beach.

The University of Southern California, and particularly the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, is strategically positioned in terms of both abundant human capital and physical location to creatively shape this environment. With two of our research powerhouses — the Information Sciences Institute and the Institute for Creative Technologies — located in the heart of Silicon Beach, we stand ready to serve as the premier private research university driving technology innovation in Southern California — and to transform Silicon Beach into SCilicon Beach! Innovation and technology entrepreneurship are becoming indispensable pillars of engineering schools around the world.

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