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Want to build a startup while earning your MBA?\u00a0Look beyond the\u00a0entrepreneurship courses to the actual founder resources available at\u00a0your target business schools.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
TIME magazine\u2019s inaugural ranking of\u00a0America\u2019s 80 Best Incubators and Accelerators<\/a><\/strong>, released last week, is a good place to start. Universities are all over the list. Twenty-one of the 80, including five in the top 10, have a clear university connection, whether they are housed directly on campus, operated through a university center or school, or maintain a formal affiliation with one. \u00a0<\/p>\n Several have especially strong business school ties, including Chicago Booth\u2019s Polsky Center, Creative Destruction Lab at Washington Foster, and Berkeley SkyDeck, which was co-founded with Berkeley Haas. \u00a0<\/p>\n Others, such as Northwestern\u2019s Garage and Harvard Innovation Labs, are university-wide resources that business students can tap alongside engineers, scientists, designers, and other aspiring founders.\u00a0Still others\u00a0\u2014\u00a0like the\u00a0Stanford-affiliated\u00a0StartX\u00a0and MIT-created The Engine<\/a> \u2014\u00a0operate\u00a0independently despite their deep university roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n 3 UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS IN THE TOP 7\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n For would-be founders, TIME\u2019s\u00a0list\u00a0highlights\u00a0programs with\u00a0access to an\u00a0innovation\u00a0infrastructure much bigger than the business school itself. That could mean an MBA founder\u00a0prototyping alongside\u00a0an engineering student or\u00a0helping commercialize technology from a university lab.\u00a0The best incubators and accelerators often provide access\u00a0to entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, legal help, wet labs, pitch competitions, seed funding, or\u00a0a technical\u00a0co-founder.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Take\u00a0The Garage at Northwestern University<\/a>, which landed at No.\u00a05 on TIME\u2019s ranking.\u00a0Founded\u00a0in 2015\u00a0and\u00a0located\u00a0in\u00a0a campus parking structure,\u00a0it\u00a0has\u00a0supported more than 1,500 startups\u00a0that\u00a0have collectively raised more than\u00a0$1.6 billion\u00a0and created more than 2,600 jobs. Some 2,000 Northwestern students engage with The Garage each academic year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kellogg MBA students\u00a0Neha Mehta and Catherine Malloy<\/a>\u00a0used The Garage to build\u00a0Rora,\u00a0a\u00a0women\u2019s health startup focused on menopause care\u00a0and\u00a0one of\u00a0Poets&Quants\u2019\u00a0Most Disruptive MBA Startups for 2025<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Mehta and Malloy\u00a0spent\u00a0a summer in\u00a0The Garage\u2019s 10-week accelerator,\u00a0Jumpstart. In\u00a0The Garage\u2019s maker\u00a0space\u00a0they\u00a0ran\u00a0live customer tests, 3D-printed\u00a0packaging mockups, and iterated\u00a0on bottle and label designs. Rora won first place at Jumpstart\u2019s Demo Day and another\u00a0$10,000\u00a0in funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Garage is open to full-time Northwestern students.\u00a0Offerings range from an entry-level program for students merely curious about entrepreneurship to startup matchmaking\u00a0to\u00a0a\u00a0residency program.\u00a0VentureCat,\u00a0its university-wide startup competition, awards a $175,000 prize pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n One spot behind The Garage is\u00a0Harvard Innovation Labs<\/a>\u00a0at No. 6,\u00a0connecting\u00a0innovators across all 13\u00a0academic\u00a0schools. Since its founding in 2011, it has helped more than 7,000 ventures whose founders have collectively raised more than\u00a0$15 billion. Its facilities sit between Harvard Business School and Harvard\u2019s Science and Engineering Complex in Allston.\u00a0<\/p>\n No. 7, University of Chicago Booth School of Business\u2019\u00a0Polsky Center for\u00a0Entrepreneurship\u00a0and Innovation,<\/a>\u00a0applies\u00a0Booth\u2019s\u00a0expertise\u00a0to venture creation and commercialization across the university. Its staff connects entrepreneurs with investors and partners, supports university technologies, and runs the New Venture Challenge, the longtime Booth startup competition whose alumni include Grubhub, Braintree\/Venmo, and Simple Mills.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Last fall, the center launched\u00a0Booth\u2019s new undergraduate minor<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0entrepreneurship and innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n HOW UNIVERSITIES BECAME STARTUP FACTORIES\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Incubators\u00a0may\u00a0feel like a natural feature of\u00a0elite research universities\u00a0where founders\u00a0get\u00a0direct access to\u00a0business professors, computer scientists, engineers, doctors, researchers, lawyers, venture investors, and thousands of ambitious students looking for the next interesting thing to build.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0always the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n The model\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0really pick up steam until\u00a0the\u00a01970s\u00a0when\u00a0the National Science Foundation began experimenting with\u00a0ways to move technology and ideas out of university laboratories<\/a>\u00a0and into practical use.\u00a0<\/p>\n NSF-backed innovation centers at MIT, the University of Oregon, the University of Utah, and Carnegie Mellon\u00a0became early test cases. MIT emphasized undergraduate coursework and turning ideas into products. Utah focused on an ecosystem around research-driven startups\u00a0while\u00a0Carnegie Mellon created a nonprofit \u201chatchery\u201d to support graduate student ventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n CMU\u00a0was particularly suited to the experiment because it combined strong engineering with a world-class business school, urban planning, industrial design, and an interdisciplinary culture. Its Center for Entrepreneurial Development\u00a0(now the\u00a0Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship<\/a>)\u00a0gave early founders space and seed support while trying to make entrepreneurship education a core function of a modern technology university.\u00a0<\/p>\n The university-as-innovation-engine model eventually became embedded across higher education.\u00a0TIME\u2019s 2026 ranking\u00a0shows\u00a0just how thoroughly that model has taken hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n FROM ROTMAN TO FOSTER,\u00a0A B-SCHOOL ACCELERATOR GOES GLOBAL\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The ranking also highlights\u00a0Creative Destruction Lab,\u00a0<\/a> a startup accelerator with deep roots in business education. Created in 2012 at the University of Toronto\u2019s Rotman School of Management, CDL has since spread its model around the world.<\/p>\n MBA students work alongside science- and technology-based startups, helping founders with financial models, market evaluation, and scaling strategies. The network now includes chapters at business schools such as Oxford Sa\u00efd, HEC Paris, and at the University of Washington\u2019s Foster School of Business whose lab landed at No. 15 on TIME\u2019s ranking.\u00a0<\/p>\n CDL-Seattle<\/a> runs a nine-month program for early-stage science and technology startups and connects them with entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders.\u00a0While business students may not necessarily be\u00a0inventing the medical device, quantum technology, or manufacturing process, they can\u00a0help\u00a0determine\u00a0whether anyone will buy it, how much capital it needs, and how to turn a technically impressive idea into\u00a0a viable\u00a0company.<\/p>\n SILICON VALLEY\u2019S UNIVERSITY STARTUP ECOSYSTEM\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Further south, in the unicorn factory that is Silicon Valley,\u00a0universities and business schools are deeply woven into the cross-pollination that fuels the world\u2019s most prolific startup ecosystem.\u00a0<\/p>\n Berkeley\u00a0SkyDeck<\/a>,\u00a0ranked\u00a0No. 24, was created jointly by\u00a0Berkeley Haas, the College of Engineering, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research.\u00a0SkyDeck\u00a0selects\u00a0roughly 20\u00a0companies for each of\u00a0two\u00a0annual cohorts, while giving Haas students opportunities to intern with startups, network with founders and advisers, and potentially find ventures to join.\u00a0<\/p>\n Across the Bay,\u00a0StartX, ranked No. 9,\u00a0offers mentorship, education, and a startup community for Stanford-affiliated entrepreneurs. Though\u00a0it\u00a0operates\u00a0as an independent\u00a0nonprofit,\u00a0it was founded by Stanford\u00a0students\u00a0and partners\u00a0with the university through the Stanford-StartX\u00a0Fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n NEXT PAGE:<\/strong> TIME\u2019s America\u2019s Best Incubators and Accelerators of 2026<\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want to build a startup while earning your MBA?\u00a0Look beyond the\u00a0entrepreneurship courses to the actual founder resources available…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[178],"tags":[277766,79,234109,277767,18,236,19,277768,17,277769,277770,238,1093,140554],"class_list":["post-657103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entrepreneurship","tag-berkeley-haas","tag-business","tag-business-schools","tag-chicago-booth","tag-eire","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-ie","tag-incubators-and-accelerators","tag-ireland","tag-mba-entrepreneurship","tag-northwestern-kellogg","tag-startups","tag-time","tag-university-innovation"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117160886967261381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}