Entrepreneurship that lifts the people and places around it, from Carson and Compton to the Port of Los Angeles.
Dr. Thomas J. Norman is a professor of management at California State University, Dominguez Hills and the faculty founder of the CSUDH Innovation Incubator. This site gathers the programs, students, and partners that make community entrepreneurship work in the South Bay and the harbor.
Most startup talk is about the next billion-dollar company. The work here is closer to home: a neighborhood shop that hires two more people, a student who graduates without debt because a side business paid the bills, a family that builds a way out of poverty through ownership.
That kind of entrepreneurship takes skill, and it takes people who care whether the community around the business does well too. The programs below teach the skill. The heart is already in the room.
In August 2015, CSUDH President Willie J. Hagan charged a Business and Industry Incubator Task Force with studying whether the university could build an incubator, which partners it could draw on, and what peer campuses had learned. Dr. Norman served on that task force, which benchmarked nine institutions, visited five, and delivered its report in June 2016.
The Incubator opened in January 2017 under founding Executive Director Gary Polk, with the slogan “We Empower Entrepreneurs.” That spring it made social entrepreneurship its focus, and the 2018 video series below grew out of that commitment. Gary Polk became the Incubator’s first permanent Executive Director in 2019 and continues the social-entrepreneurship mission through the Polk Institute Foundation.
Early clients included The Wana Family Network, which went on to acquire its largest competitor; Orozco’s Auto Service, which grew into a franchisor; LumaForge, which secured financing through contacts made at the Incubator; and WEDJ, a finalist in the NSF I-Corps program. Arto Brick, a family business in its second generation, used the Incubator to hire its first full-time CFO, build a leadership team, and add a new product division.
“We are better off since we connected with the incubator and Gary Polk at CSUDH.”
Armen Alajian, Arto Brick
Signature program
A partnership between the City of Carson and the CSUDH Innovation Incubator. The academy grew out of Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes’s idea that small businesses are the lifeline of the city. Local owners meet weekly for workshops on leadership, talent, marketing, AI and CRM tools, and financing, then present their growth plans to the community at a showcase.
Each cohort becomes its own network. Graduates keep meeting and come back to mentor the next class.
Compton and urban Los Angeles
A 10-month program, run in partnership with the City of Compton, built on the belief that entrepreneurship can help alleviate poverty. EPUC LA is the seventh chapter of the University of Notre Dame’s Urban Poverty and Business Initiative, pairing a seven-week Saturday bootcamp with monthly training and mentoring from local business professionals. The program is led by Tiana Griffin.
Renewable energy
Arevon, a renewable energy developer with deep roots in Carson, partners with CSUDH on the Applied Innovation Renewable Energy competition and a student fellowship. Teams from CSUDH and local community colleges pitch practical clean-energy ideas for their own neighborhoods. In March 2026, sixteen teams competed for $30,000 in prizes.
Students, faculty, staff, and community
The campus hub for entrepreneurs in the South Bay, housed in the Innovation and Instruction Building. Programs include Alpha Start for new ventures, the Catapult micro-internship program, the Student Startup Fund, and Transform LA for local high school students.
College of Business Administration and Public Policy
A CBAPP institute founded by Mike Grimshaw to be a safe haven and center of knowledge for all things entrepreneurial. The Sandbox focuses on entrepreneurship and small business development for first-generation students, urban communities, historically minoritized populations, and CSUDH faculty and staff.
In the classroom
Students in Dr. Norman’s entrepreneurship and management courses work on real ventures and real local businesses, using the DART model to think about how founders direct, attract, reward, and teach the people who build with them.
A 2018 CSUDH video series from the Innovation Incubator’s first years, featuring its clients, mentors, and founding leaders.
The Innovation Incubator runs on student talent. Interns and volunteers manage projects, produce video, design, write, market, and build the systems behind every program.
Toro Entrepreneur Society. The student-run entrepreneurship organization at CSUDH, led by president Kain Marin, meets monthly in the Innovation and Instruction Building and runs events and a student business fair. Dr. Norman serves as faculty advisor. Follow TES on Instagram (@entrepreneursocietycsudh) for meetings and events, or reach the Innovation Incubator at incubator@csudh.edu.
Community entrepreneurship works when cities, industry, and the waterfront economy pull in the same direction.
The nation’s busiest container port and the economic engine of the harbor communities.
The ocean innovation campus at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, bringing science, business, and education together on the waterfront.
A steady partner for the small businesses that give San Pedro its character.
Co-creator of the Small Business Growth Academy and a champion of its local business owners.
Sponsor of the AIRE competition and the Arevon Fellows Program.
The public university in Carson that anchors the Innovation Incubator.
For Innovation Incubator programs, including the Carson academy, EPUC LA, and AIRE, contact the Incubator at incubator@csudh.edu or (310) 243-3444, and follow the Incubator on LinkedIn.
Gifts to the Innovation Incubator support student entrepreneurs, the Student Startup Fund, and community programs like EPUC LA. Give online through CSU Dominguez Hills and designate your gift to the Innovation Incubator, or call the Office of Development at (310) 243-2182.
To reach Dr. Norman about speaking, partnerships, or mentoring, email tjnorman@gmail.com.