The DMZ at Ryerson University is a business incubator and co-working space for entrepreneurs with a mandate to help startups succeed by connecting them with customers, advisors, influencers and other entrepreneurs. The Zone was established in 2010 with offices in the Dundas Square building. The Zone is run by students and open to both students and non-students to apply with business ideas and prototypes. Accepted startups receive four months of free co-working space and services (after which they can pay a membership fee to stay on), and access to seed funding and an accelerator program through Ryerson Futures Inc. (RFI), a for-profit business associated with Ryerson. The DMZ also offers an "Innovation-for-Hire" program that laccesses expertise associated with the DMZ and Ryerson University to solve real business problems for industry partners as well as an intrapreneur program.

The DMZ was the first of an network of other "zones" at the University, each specializing in growth sectors to support new entrepreneurs. Zone Learning administers to the entrepreneurial centres or zones mentoring students to create their own businesses. Digital Medial Zone (DMZ) was the first and with its success, other schools established their own zones.

The zones, include :

Biomedical Zone
Fashion Zone
Design Fabrication Zone
Digital Media Zone (DMZ), April 2010
iBoost Zone
Innovation Centre for Urban Energy (iCUE)
Legal Innovation Zone
Science Discovery Zone
SocialVentures Zone
Transmedia Zone

Information from: "About DMZ: Welcome to the Digital Media Zone at Ryerson University", Digital Media Zone. http://digitalmediazone.ryerson.ca/about/