Smart locker competition may also deliver unexpected outcomes

(Reposted with permission from theconversation.edu.au)

Australia Post has survived more than a hundred years of shipping information and goods. Then came the internet, which massively shrunk hardcopy mail, bills, brochures and so on.

But with the rise of the internet also came the boom in sourcing “stuff” from almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime — and have it delivered to your doorstep. Australians are now globally ranked 2nd for online shopping and want the convenience of the process to end with a parcel, not a fake delivery notice.

Depending on where you live, the fake delivery notice may be a familiar story: using an online parcel tracking code, you see your parcel has arrived at a shop. You then dash off to pick it up. A day or two later, you receive the delivery attempt notice regarding the parcel you already picked up, demonstrating that they are not even trying to deliver parcels to your door. Can you blame them? Not at all. Parcels do not fit mailboxes, people are often away during delivery times, and no postal worker wants to drag around heaps of heavy parcels that probably only end up being returned to the shop. Delivering is just not as efficient as faking delivery.

To address this problem, Australia Post is experimenting with 24 hour smart lockers. One aspect Australia Post can intentionally experiment with is the location. However, the first generation lockers are co-located with Australia Post outlets. Why not place some smart lockers in between shops and closer to you? After all, Australia Post is in the business of delivery, not storage. Placing lockers closer to final destinations would also mean they are emptied faster.

Given their aversion to experimenting with location, my bet is that Australia Post sees unexpected outcomes as risks that need to be systematically avoided. They have probably already devised contingency plans in case parcels contain perishable items that are not picked up until the recipient comes home from holidays. Hopefully they will also have considered that many people (such as the elderly) may not want to be required to own a smart phone and GPS enabled app to pick up their parcels.

Perhaps a Christmas season in Vancouver, Canada best illustrates the dilemma of completing the delivery process. Within one evening, a few centimetres of snow caused chaos. Because of the snow, parcels (and delivery notices) could not be delivered beyond main streets, and instantly piled up from floor to ceiling at many shops. Those who knew (via the internet) that their parcel had arrived had to line up outside while postal workers dug through the mountain of parcels.

In Sydney, the experience is not quite as extreme, but I routinely see long lines of people waiting to do nothing else than pick up their parcel from one of five very busy staff. Clearly, there is more room to innovate the process of final delivery.

Well, Australia Post isn’t the only one who knows customers want more. Mark Bouris and James Packer have just teamed up to challenge Australia Post with their own smart lockers. The image in the report suggest the lockers will be indoors, so those Christmas chocolates from your gran won’t melt away, too.

The expected outcome of this competition is convenience from order to delivery: order your items anytime online, pick them up anytime, too.

What interests me more are the unexpected outcomes of smart lockers. Unexpected outcomes are seen as lucky and can lead to entirely new business opportunities. For example, instead of being seen as too impersonal, smart lockers may be appreciated for their anonymity and cause a surge in ordering potentially embarrassing parcels.

If Australia Post were open to cultivating lucky outcomes, they might intentionally vary how the smart lockers at each location work, and treat each location as a separate experiment. For example, they might enable some lockers to entirely replace the shop by letting individuals pay at the locker to place their own parcels in the locker for a specified recipient to pick the parcel up.

Such an experiment may work for many Gumtree or eBay users, to avoid having to coordinate schedules around each other or the post office.

Managing for unexpected outcomes, including having the right location, technology or business model is a topic I discuss in an upcoming conference paper on the role of luck in innovation.

I completely understand if Australia Post is avoiding unexpected outcomes with most of their billion-dollar infrastructure upgrade. As for the smart lockers, I hope Australia Post and Bouris get a little creative, experiment a bit, and are receptive to unexpected outcomes. For now, I’m hoping the timing and outcome of the smart lockers means we’ll all get our prezzies under our trees, not fake delivery notices.

(please leave comments on the article at theconversation.edu.au)

--------------------------------------------------


We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Hon. G. Combet, Minister for I&I, comments on Aussie brain drain

Last week, in response to the Sydney Morning Herald article and ensuing debate on Australia's 'brain drain' (http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/brain-drain-why-young-entrepreneurs-leave-home-20120517-1ytoo.html),  the CIE invited the Honourable Greg Combet, Minister for Industry and Innovation, to contribute a guest blog post to the discussion.  (Please note that the views expressed below are those of the author and do not reflect an official statement or position of the CIE.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blog contribution for Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
By Greg Combet AM MP
Minister for industry and Innovation
Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency

The Australian economy is globalising and fast. One facet of this trend is the way Australian entrepreneurs are criss-crossing the world, building experience and networks and selling not just themselves and their products and services, but the view of Australians as global entrepreneurs.

A series of articles in the Sydney Morning Herald has bemoaned this so called “brain drain” as, mostly young, entrepreneurs depart our shores in search of investment and markets for their ideas. The fact is that these journeys are part of the economic and social transformation that shows a path to the future of the Australian economy. This is no “brain drain” but actually a small country finding opportunities in a global market and punching above its weight.

As these entrepreneurs know, a global audience of 7 billion investors, customers and partners brings tremendous opportunity. Closing our borders or limiting our aspirations to the domestic market alone will only limit the entrepreneurs’ growth and our economy’s growth.

We need these entrepreneurs to mentor and introduce local businesses to global networks, to share their experiences and to promote Australia’s strengths around the world. We don’t want to lose them – but we should recognise that they don’t need to be physically here to add value.

Our long-term competitive advantage is in the ideas and energy of our people. The coming century will be shaped by significant geographical, demographic and technological trends.

Two of those technological trends that our entrepreneurs are already tapping into are clean technology and ICT. The Government is making significant investments in infrastructure, skills, research and innovation to support their initiative.

The $36 billion National Broadband Network is the most ambitious investment in infrastructure in our history. The NBN is the cornerstone of our Digital Economy Strategy, which will help Australia become a leading global digital economy by 2020.

The NBN will provide the platform for Australian businesses to develop, distribute and benefit from a wide array of digital applications and services. This opportunity will catalyse local development and take-up but also tell the world that Australians will be players in the global digital economy.

Faster broadband will provide benefits to the Australian economy through digital productivity, cloud computing and virtual collaboration.

The Australian Government’s Clean Energy Future plan will encourage the development of low carbon energy generation technologies. The transformation of the energy sector will drive $100 billion in investment in renewable energy electricity generation over the period to 2050.

We’re also investing almost $9 billion per annum in science, research and innovation, representing a 35 per cent increase on the 2007 figures.

In addition to the digital economy and clean energy strategies, the Government has a comprehensive set of support programs for Australian entrepreneurs to innovate and commercialise new technologies.

The new R&D Tax Incentive which delivers a significant increase in support for entrepreneurs; Commercialisation Australia; Enterprise Connect and the current round of the Innovation Investment Fund where the Government will be committing up to $100m of co-investment.

It is hard to predict the future but two things are certain – we’re going to be more connected and going to be doing more with less from a resource perspective. So, instead of pessimism, we should also be celebrating the increased globalisation of our entrepreneurs. The experiences, networks and success that they are having on a global stage are part of this transformation. Our challenge is to remain connected with our own global citizens and use these Australian links to our advantage.

The Australian Government is making a significant investment in the future and laying the policy foundations that will help our entrepreneurs make their mark in global markets.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We wish to acknowledge the CIE's sponsors and express our appreciation of their support.  All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

CIE welcomes Frost & Sullivan as their newest sponsor

The Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship is pleased to announce Frost & Sullivan as its newest sponsor!

Frost & Sullivan is a global research and consulting firm with presence in 38 countries, providing in-depth research coverage in a wide variety of industries. Frost & Sullivan enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership.

We are excited to announce that through this sponsorship agreement, the CIE is able to offer entrepreneurial UNSW students access to the latest and most comprehensive market intelligence. This will be of tremendous benefit as they develop their new business ideas.


We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowledge the continuing support of the Australian School of Business, Ernst & Young, Frost & Sullivan, and RosesOnly. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

 

            

 

Peter Farrell Cup winning team Pluvision takes 2nd place at Idea2Product Global in Sweden!

This blogpost courtesy of Niklas Olsson, UNSW exchange student from Sweden and founder of The Entrepreneurial Chase.

As a finalist in the Idea to Product® Global Competitions (I2P), Pluvision is a truly international team – members are from China, France, Korea and Sweden. Eric Wei, inventor of a new generation of eye drop technology, and Niklas Olsson represented Pluvision in the I2P Global Competition in Sweden. 

Held for the first time outside of Texas, I2P is a competition in the commercialization of innovation aiming to fill the gap between university research and business plan competitions. This year, 18 teams competed in three parallel championships: ICT, Energy and Life Science. 

As the first Australian finalist ever, Pluvision represented UNSW and the Brien Holden Vision Institute. It was with great excitement that we accepted our spot, something that turned around quickly as we were told that the airfare would have to be funded by ourselves. All other teams had won intensive pre-round competitions like I2P Africa or I2P Europe and had been funded by their respective universities. With only two weeks to final acceptance this called for a serious hat round.  

As the University unfortunately did not have such a trip in their budget, we raised the money ourselves. Cold calling soon created quite a long list of “No, I am sorry” and we realized that something different had to be done. By creating media buzz and awareness around this recognition of Australian innovation we managed to get the Brien Holden Vision Institute interested enough to sponsor the trip. Excited as ever, we went to represent the institute, UNSW and Australia in a final competitor field that spread across five continents and nine countries.  

I2P is about remarkable innovation and how it is to be commercialised. So those 10 slides of financials were not really useful, but instead we focused on what is most important in any business: What is the market pain you are solving and how are you doing that better than anyone else? Something that is unfortunately forgotten nowadays in the “back-of-the-credit-card” era of trying to find problems for ideas.  

Stepping out of the airport, trading 33 degree Australia for 3 degree Sweden, turned the system on, almost like boxers smelling ammonium before the big fight. Competition in the Life Science track included a nano-mesh product for surgery, an herb-based soap, a psychology-based make-up treatment and an effects indicator used at the early stages of drug development. Two had working prototypes, all but one multiple patents and one even had four PCTs filed. How on earth, in terms of feasibility, did we stand a chance? Well, we had two things that we were sure of: We knew the pain we were solving and we knew that we were doing so in a fundamentally different way.  

The competition was divided in two rounds, the first giving you feedback and the second being the final you were judged upon. The first pitch was, despite well-rehearsed, not spot-on and some major changes kept us up very late. The judges seemed pleased with the revamped version and did not even use up the full Q&A time. Either a very very good sign or a very very bad sign, our fingers were crossed for the former. Something that didn’t make us less nervous, what a fail to travel all the way and come back empty handed! 

"Second place to another innovation involving the human physical properties, more in the eye area … PLUVISION!”   http://www.ideatoproduct.org/global/

Inner joy and pride straightened our spines. As inaugural ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurs Week in Australia we had put Australian innovation on the global map. A big Thank You to Brien Holden Vision Institute, the CIE, friends and the entrepreneurial community who made us compete with such confidence. We are proud to be a part of something big growing in Australia, something creative and something exciting.


We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Peter Farrell Cup Finals Night recap

Pluvision, developer of a unique eye-wetting solution, took first place at this year’s Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition, held Wednesday 26 October on the UNSW Kensington campus.


Team Pluvision, from L to R: Hye Won Lee, Eric Wei, Noellie Garand,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Niklas Olsson, Maurice Chiarello (lecturer)


In addition to going on to compete in the John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge in December, the Pluvision team is heading to Sweden to compete in the I2P Idea2Product® competition in November.

“We’re really excited about getting selected as one of the top 15 finalists,” says student Niklas Olsson of Pluvision. “But I can’t believe we just won the Peter Farrell Cup. When I first started at UNSW I heard about the Cup but I never dreamed we’d win it!”

Of the 17 business plans submitted, eight were selected to present on the finals night. Each finalist is invited to present their enterprise to NewSouth Innovations Concept Development Meeting.

“It’s great to see students across campus identifying and tackling real-world problems. Their energy and passion was clear to see in the final pitches they delivered,” says Dr Steve Brodie of NewSouth Innovations. “I have no doubt that some of these students will go on to become successful entrepreneurs.”

Further commercialisation services are offered to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, and to the teams meriting Honourable Mention from the judges. 

RevoSen, developer of a myocardial ischaemic detection method, and Future Surgical Solutions, who have developed a novel bone-healing technology, won Honourable Mentions from the judging panel.

 

Judges, from L to R: Dr Kevin Cullen (NewSouth Innovations),
Anne-Marie Birkell (OneVentures), Peter Davison (Fishburners),
Simon Pinson (BSF), Bryce Summerell (Posse)

"It's clear to me there is no shortage of innovative research and enterprising individuals across a wide range of disciplines at UNSW,” says Peter Davison, one of the judges and a founder of co-working space and entrepreneur community Fisburners. “It’s tremendous to see students learning the basics of entrepreneurship within the university environment…the teamwork between postgraduates, undergraduates and academics to produce plausible business plans was a feature of the competition - innovative and promising in itself. I hope the University continues to make strides towards fostering student entrepreneurship."
This year’s competition featured a People’s Choice Award which was handily won by BioMark, who also placed 3rd overall.


BioMark team members, from L to R: Hayley Cullen, Arjanna Chitranjan,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Timothy Couttas,
Maurice Chiarello (lecturer), Sasa Mitric.


Professor Greg Whitwell, Deputy Dean of Programs and Students at the Australian School of Business, remarked on the high levels of collaboration evident in presentations.

“And it’s collaboration of different sorts, between disciplines certainly, but also, remarkably, between undergraduate and postgraduate students, which is extremely rare,” he says. “I commend all the teams who made it to the finals and presented some really quality and high-level ideas.”

NMT (Novel Muscle Technologies), presented their business plan for an enterprise utilizing a unique synthetic gel that, when inserted into the body, can temporarily replace muscle tissue and provide a framework for new cells and muscle fibres to grow on.



Novel Muscle Technologies (NMT) team members, from L to R: Shruthi Hariharan,
Dr Wallace Bridge (lecturer), Scott Jamieson, Maurice Chiarello (lecturer), Anishka Tewari

Based on research done by Scott Jamieson, their business plan and presentation impressed the judges enough to award them second place, with remarks about the sophistication of both the idea and its development into a business. Judge Simon Pinson says,“It really is impressive what we’ve seen here this evening!”










We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Fear of failure vs failure to start (part 2)

My apologies on announcing the winners of last week's Peter Farrell Cup. Official press release or announcement coming soon. In the meanwhile, I couldn't help building on the earlier blog post about fear of failure vs failure to start. It was nagging me to create this bubble chart based on the same GEM data with a few changes:

• Fear of failure and entrepreneurial intentions in the same chart as different axes
• Bubble area according to additional population data (since the GEM data is based at the individual level, not firm level) 
• Color coded by GEM's classification (Factor-driven economy: RED, Efficiency-driven economy: BLUE, Innovation-driven economy: YELLOW)

So, if one were to draw a linear regression line through the whole data set, then Australia would probably be middle of the road for the overall data. If you look at only the yellow bubbles (innovation-driven economies), then Australia tends to be towards the upper right, i.e., greater intentions to start (not bad), but higher fear of failure (not good). Does that mean that relative to the other innovation-driven economies, Australia is a country of "intentrepreneurs" or "wantrepreneurs"?

Blog posts coming up:

• Winners of the Peter Farrell Cup
• UNSW vs Australia in graduate exit surveys: Who is creating jobs (not just filling them)?

Don't forget, tonight (Wed 2 Nov) is our semi-annual Meet the Entrepreneur event, co-sponsored by E&Y. This event's theme will be State of Play - What are the myths and realities about the VC industry in Australia, how does it compare to the rest of the world, and does the quality of entrepreneurship and innovation in Australia "stack up"?

We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

 

How do Entrepreneurs find opportunity? They take a look in the trash can

This blogpost courtesy of Niklas Olsson, UNSW exchange student from Sweden and founder of The Entreprenuerial Chase - Sydney.

Passing security leaving all but pen, notepad and business card in security and finally taking a seat at the U.S. Consulate General felt like preparing for an Obama speech. America is known for high security and just moments after sitting down another notorious reputation was confirmed: they foster high-calibre entrepreneurs. The way I look at trash cans will never be the same after meeting Jim Poss, CTO and Founder at BigBelly Solar.

Jim describes innovators and entrepreneurs as people who connect two, for others, totally unrelated things. There are no new inventions, just new ways of combining the already existing. BigBelly Solar uses solar power to run a smart grid for waste and recycling. The grid is made up of trash cans with a five times greater capacity compared to today’s everyday collectors. But the compacting system isn’t the only innovation that underpins this game changer. The “BigBellies” communicate wirelessly with a command centre enabling the waste collectors to measure the exact level of each and every trash can in real time. The city of Philadelphia has for example utilized this information to get the number of weekly collections down to 2.5 as compared to 17 when it introduced the system.

Entrepreneurs are curious by nature and opportunities often spring from their own experiences. If Jim got his revelation when falling on banana peel remains a rumour, but when you are to see an opportunity, make sure to go for the lowest hanging fruit and one that benefits the most people by using your product/service. The reason is simple; as a far-from-complete start-up, you want to give early adopters a benefit big enough that they will stay with yout through the inevitable mistakes along the way. All are however not as forgiving. Prepare to have your idea struck down by a lot of people, as Jim puts it: “One must almost be a bit delusional to make it through.”

An entrepreneur is someone that challenges the status quo, someone who, unlike companies, are not there to protect their revenues. The difference is quite obvious to Jim. “While Toyota develops a hybrid car, the entrepreneur invents a ride sharing service. Frankly they wouldn’t launch it even if they could. It is against the profitable status quo.” But when they start to notice you, when you start turning things upside down, that is when you know you are on to something.

I have been struck by the same enthusiasm in every true entrepreneur I have met. They are game changers, they are in it for the vision and they all dare to take the risk. So how do they find opportunity? Take a look at something you don’t like, form a vision and answer the following question: “Are you afraid to look stupid?” Did people laugh at Jim Poss when he was to introduce a solar powered, digitalized, multi-compressing trash can? I am not sure, and Jim says he’s looked stupid many a time. But I am sure that it wouldn’t have stopped him from trying again. It is better to have a fair intellect that is well-used than a powerful one that is idle.


We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Announcing the Peter Farrell Cup competition FINALISTS!!

 After a (ahem) slight delay, we are pleased to announced the finalists in the Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition. 

Of the 17 entrants, EVERY team was picked by at least one judge as a being worthy of further interest.  However, the following eight had the highest and most scores, earning them the right to pitch LIVE to the judging team.

These eight teams will be presenting their ideas and enterprises to our five judges on Wednesday evening, 26 October, in the Ritchie Theatre (Scientia Bldg) on the UNSW Kensington campus, beginning at 6 PM.

Come along to hear the newest and best of UNSW innovation and entrepreneurship!  (If you haven't already done so, please register here so we can get the catering numbers right.)

Abracadaver
BetaMed
Biomark
Future Surgical Solutions
Munchable
NMT
Pluvision
RevoSen

Many thanks to our judges for their hard work in reading, evaluating and scoring the business plans.  We look forward to your assessment and feedback on the live pitches!

Bryce Summerell - CEO at The Entourage, founder of DateRate.com.au, founder at Meet Bryce, and president at ACESUTS
Anne-Marie Birkell - General Partner in OneVentures and non-executive director for RedFlow Technologies Ltd
Simon Pinson – co-founder of BSF Group
Kevin Cullen - CEO NewSouth Innovations Pty Limited
Paul Levins - President Australia and New Zealand, Intellectual Ventures
Peter Davison - founder, Fishburners

For more information, please don't hesitate to contact the CIE (cie@unsw.edu.au)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. All of our sponsors help provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, these donors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Fear of failure or failure to start?

There have been recent critiques about What's Killing Australian Innovation (see our commentary on a recent talk by ASB Dean Alec Cameron, and related ABC radio interview). At this week's TiECon Australia, TiE Sydney chapter president Dilip Rao commented that Australia is ranked 18th globally for having a 'fear of failure' (first being worst). Based on the GEM Global Report 2010, Australia actually shows up worse, ranked 16th out of 59 countries.While that sounds quite bad, the spread of the scores shows that Australia is nonetheless close to the average, and not that much different to, say, Germany (see figure below). The classic benchmark is the US, which is ranked 47, and still not close to being statistically significantly away from average (assuming a normal distribution).

Fear of Failure: Percentage of 18–64 age group with positive perceived opportunities who indicate that fear of failure would prevent them from setting up a business

Wait a second, but what's this other variable, called "Entrepreneurial Intention"? Well, it's defined as the "percentage of 18–64 age group (individuals involved in any stage of entrepreneurial activity excluded) who intend to start a business within three years" (p. 63 in the 2010 GEM report). Australia ranks poorly on this one as well (39/59) if you take the rankings at face value. Interestingly, the US ranks even lower than Australia here (44/59).

What the heck is going on?

My best guess, is that in some countries, entrepreneurship is not a choice, but a way of life. Almost everyone there has to hustle and bustle to feed their family. Meanwhile in the "Innovation-Driven Economies" it's an optional career choice. So, focusing on the latter, what do we see?

Well, Australia ranks 6/23 on the fear of failure measure, but still very close to average for the group (US ranks 20/23 in this group). Australia also ranks 7/23 on the entrepreneurial intention measure, again still very close to average for the group (US ranks 11 in this group, worse than Australia!).

=> Claims that Australia has a fear of failure are NOT supported by THIS data

So, what IS killing Australian Innovation? Come join the debate at the next Meet the Entrepreneur to find out!

Meet the Entrepreneur is our semi-annual speaker series which is co-sponsored and hosted by Ernst & Young at their Sydney CBD office. This professional networking event features a moderated panel discussion between industry experts on a chosen topic.  After the discussion, a Q&A session winds up the formal part of the evening. Hosted networking occurs both before and after the discussion.

This event's theme will be State of Play - What are the myths and realities about the VC industry in Australia, how does it compare to the rest of the world, and does the quality of entrepreneurship and innovation in Australia "stack up"? 

Does Australia have enough critical mass to be a world leader in innovation? Are we creative enough, do we have a big enough appetite for risk, or are we just gamblers? Come hear our panel of venture capitalists, innovators, and entrepreneurs discuss this topic guided by the expert moderation of noted journalist Valerie Khoo.

Yours truly,
The Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship


We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business. Their continued support helps provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, our sponsors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship. To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

What's Killing Australian Innovation?

(Post courtesy of Niklas Olsson. Olsson is a study-abroad study at UNSW, hailing from Sweden and bringing The Entrepreneurial Chase to Sydney.  Olsson placed in the CIE's annual PitchFe$t competition, winning tickets to The Festival of Dangerous Ideas.  He has generously contributed this blogpost from his attendance at the "What's Killing Australian Innovation?" session held on October 1 at the Sydney Opera House. 

In addition to his participation as a panellist at this session, the Dean of the Australian School of Business, Professor Alec Cameron, was interviewed on ABC's Saturday Extra radio program: listen, download, or read the transcript here.)


One hour of dangerous ideas; conclusion? It’s all about people

In the auditorium the buzz amongst the spectators was energetic. Innovation is a most current topic amongst Australians especially considering the increasing prosperity of the Australian economy. It was evident that attendees of the sold-out event were curious to find out how innovation, as such a critical part of the economy, would be able to sustain the future.

A varied set of panellists representing the academic, biomedical and IT sectors unanimously stated the number one killer of innovation in Australia is market size.

“There is not as much room for a narrow market,” as Alec Cameron, Dean of the Australian School of Business at UNSW, described it. A niche is often the start of any innovation and to have a set of customers the size to keep an early cash flow going might be the difference of failure and success.

The moderator opened up the floor with asking: “Can Australia breed the next Mark Zuckerberg?” Alan Noble, serial entrepreneur and current Engineering Director at Google Australia, was quick to point out that the factor of distance is essentially gone. In IT and tech Australia has produced several successes such as Google Maps and most recently Atlassian. It has seen and will see a steady growth, it is just a matter of getting the ecosystem right. What’s killing Australian innovation right now is that there are too few Australian successes willing to send the elevator back down, a system that is driving high-calibre Australian people away to America and Silicon Valley.

As they say, a jack-of-all-trades is a master of none. Martin Rogers, CEO at Prima Biomed, further emphasized how specialisation breeds quality and recognition. For example, in the field of biotech Germany has pursued and reached their ambition to be number one in manufacturing. Rogers also answered the question: Is regulation a hinder of innovation? Regulation in biotechnology is essential, providing a safety net and assuring the market need for any new drug. However at the same time it is the reason why Gardasil sells at more than 240 times its manufacturing cost. Ultimately cost has to be carried by the consumer and we have to ask ourselves, is that a trade-off we are willing to make? Government can regulate all prospects of failure but is that a reasonable burden for society?

But what’s really killing innovation in Australia is not market size, scarcity of mentors or even regulations. It is the Australian culture. Failure is not a good thing; in fact it is not even acceptable. I fully agree with Alan Noble, who said, “Failure is a good thing. You cannot truly innovate without taking risks and you cannot take risks without the prospect of failure.” Australia has great human capital and a set of entrepreneurial people that have the ambition, but why would they bother trying if a failure carries such massive social and professional risk? The panellists described it as almost being tainted, and the agility needed to meet today’s complex and ever-changing market needs comes from failing, and failing quickly.

As much as the panellists talked about the Australian context, the discussion very early on failed to set the frame for innovation. Personally, I believe that in the 21st century it is no longer a game of capital gain; too little was discussed around the importance of a three-folded innovation model. Social and environmental gain is as important, and a more multifaceted discussion including innovation in media (Murdoch), information transparency (Assange), and embracing the aboriginal culture could have created a richer conversation.

So can Australia produce the next Zuckerberg? What’s killing that possibility is nothing but ourselves - embrace failure and let that next Zuckerberg try a couple of times before getting it right.

Failure is neither permanent nor fatal; and Australia: “Failure is an event, not a person”.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are pleased to confirm Ernst & Young and RosesOnly as sponsors of the CIE. We would like to thank the Farrell Family Foundation and Gary Zamel for their generous donations. We also acknowlege the continuing support of the Australian School of Business.  Their continued support helps provide the means to host networking events, award prizes, and reimburse our suppliers and service providers. In exchange, our sponsors receive good karma and public recognition as supporters of innovation and entrepreneurship.  To become a sponsor of CIE and support our community engagement activity, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au.

Twitter: @cieunsw (headlines)
Google Calendar: https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=cie@unsw.edu.au (events)
RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/all_cie_unsw?format=xml (headlines and events)
Daily email digest: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=all_cie_unsw (daily email digest of headlines and events, sent ~noon)
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Innovation-Entrepreneurship/187722841299461 (our RSS feed in facebook)

Overview of UNSW and surrounding innovation system

In conversation with a few people around UNSW and Sydney, it's great to see a lot of interest in boosting the level of innovation and entrepreneurship around here. To help people who are a little newer to this eco-system understand who's doing what, we summarized a sample of the players here: http://bit.ly/oVG2JS


For omissions, editorial suggestions, etc, please contact us at cie@unsw.edu.au


Enjoy,
CIE

UNSW Inventor of the Year Awards

NewSouth Innovations presents the UNSW Inventor of the Year Awards on Thursday 1 September at 6:30 PM in the Tyree Room of the John Niland Scientia Building (G19).

The UNSW Inventor of the Year Awards celebrate and reward UNSW researchers that are making a positive difference to the world.

Watch some of the finalists discussing their passion for innovation. 

Special guests at the UNSW Inventor of the Year Awards include:

• Professor Fred Hilmer AO, UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor,
• Professor Les Field AM, UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)
• Dr Kevin Cullen, CEO, NewSouth Innovations Pty Limited (NSi)

Please take a few moments to view some extraordinary achievements from last year's winners and finalists. Click here to view a YouTube video of last year's winner - Thorsten Trupke and here for our Student Inventor of the Year - Henner Kampwerth.

Enquiries please contact Michelle Evans on (02) 9385 4374 or email: events@nsinnovations.com.au

 

CIE Competition Season - Kick-Off July 28th

As you may have guessed from the previous blog post, the competition season is upon us.

This year in addition to the long-running Peter Farrell Cup Entrepreneurship Competition, the CIE is working in partnership with the Centre for Social Impact to present the Social Entrepreneurship Prize.

The Social Entrepreneurship Prize competition, sponsored by Peter Kazacos, provides university students with the opportunity to bring their social entrepreneurship idea to life by pitching to a panel of experts from the Sydney social entrepreneurship community.

Both competitions are open to all currently-enrolled students at UNSW or other Australian universities, at either the undergraduate or post-graduate level. 

While each competition has a distinct "flavour" and orientation, the CIE assists students to prepare by offering a series of workshops to build contestants' key foundational skills. 

Teams submit a business plan and finalists are selected to pitch their ideas “live” to the judging panel. Finalists will be ranked on the idea and its market viability and also presentation and skill at answering the judges’ questions.

Students entering any of the competitions are encouraged to attend the workshops and learn in a relaxed and encouraging atmosphere.

The first workshop is the Mix n' Match evening, held from 6-9 PM on July 28 in the ASB Lounge.  Food and drink will be served and registration is required.  Click here to register.

Check out the Events page on the CIE website; we'll be posting upates, information, and FAQs as the workshops come up.

Looking foward to an exciting competition season, and we'll see you on the 28th!

Social Innovation Competition

(from our colleagues at the UNSW Co-op Students Charitable Society)

Want to put your skills and creative knowledge to the test and make a real-life impact on the community? Then the Social Innovation Competition is the project for you!

What is the Social Innovation Competition?
The Social Innovation Competition (SIC) aims to connect university students to a variety of charities and not-for-profit organisations with the purpose of creating awareness of the challenges faced by these organisations and to help generate innovative solutions to these challenges. The competition will allow students to gain first hand contact with charity representatives as well as empowering them through specialized CIE workshops to create unique and “outside the box” ideas.

How can you benefit from participating in this competition? 

• Put your skills and knowledge to the test to come up with creative ways of addressing challenges faced by charities;
• Make a meaningful impact on the community that goes far beyond making a simple donation;
• Learn how to develop and structure a business proposal through a range of CIE workshops;
• Win casg prizes for your allocated charity as well as prizes for yourselves;
• Potentially assist your charity to implement your idea if the charity deems it feasible;
• Develop teamwork, leadership, communication, presentation, problem-solving and analytical skills, which all look great on your resume!

How does the competition work?

The competition will run for 6 weeks. Students compete in teams of 4 for the chance to win prize money for their charity. 

 

Student teams will register their team and outline why they should be chosen to participate in the competition. Selected teams will participate in the information night where charities and students will be given the opportunity to meet and brainstorm with their host charity. 6 weeks later all teams will present their ideas to a panel of judges who will select the prizewinners. 

 

Interested?

Then stay tuned for further updates! For more information, email us on SIC.Project2011@gmail.com

 

The Innovator's Challenge!

Student Entrepreneurs: Agents of Change are launching The Innovators Challenge on August, to be run simultaneously in Melbourne and at UNSW.

The event is based on Stanford's competition of the same name, and it's had great success for a number of years as part of Entrepreneurs Week (http://www.eweek.org.au/).

There will be a launch event on the 11th of August with a keynote speaker and the announcement of a bunch of in-kind and experiential prizes for which students will compete.

The finals and judging takes place on the 19th of August. Both the launch and the finals will occur simultaneously in Melbourne and Sydney.

More information and website coming soon!!

Entrepreneurial Internship Program wrap-up and poster session

Last Wednesday the Design @ Eng exhibition space (5^th floor, Mechanical Engineering Bldg on UNSW Kensington campus) saw the Poster Presentation and wrap-up of the CIE’s Entrepreneurial Internship Program, the culmination of an exciting half-year for both interns and sponsors.

14 students exchanged their summer holidays for work experience at some of Australia’s leading innovative companies. 

Here’s a sampling of the projects on which the interns worked (check reports)

• Disaster response procedures, which unexpectedly got a field-test  during the Queensland floods
• Voice-based psychometric analysis technology
• Video analytics for retail applications
• Software product management
• CRM system development
• Comprehensive communication strategy development for internal and external stakeholders

For the event, students prepared posters detailing the company and the project(s) with which they were involved.

 

After their stint in the world of work, interns also submitted a written report and an evaluation of their experience at the sponsoring organization.  Companies submitted an evaluation of the student and their project, all of which were highly complementary.

“Much higher calibre than expected of one so young,” raved one company representative.

“This is the second intern I have had in 3 years and I continue to derive value for our business [with] this program,” declared another.

Company reviewers were asked for an dollar estimate for the value of the work performed by the intern.  Amounts ranged from $5,000 to $20,000; one interned performed so well that their sponsoring company estimated the value of their work at over $50,000!

During the evening, students presented their poster to their fellow cohort members and to company representatives.  All were impressed at the scope of the students' achievements.

Other comments from the representatives of the sponsoring organizations:

“A great experience overall.  A fresh mind willing to commit to challenging business problems always gives us some surprises, positive ones…the flexibility and commitment demonstrated by the intern greatly helped the team to address some of the burning business challenges in a relatively short time frame.”

“[We] enjoyed working with the 2 interns from the CIE Internship Program and found their contributions to be very helpful and positive for us and the interns.”

The CIE's Director, Dr Martin Bliemel was on hand to present both the students and the company representatives with their certificates of achievement and recognition.

Students were also enthusiastic about their experiences:

“The internship with [company] was an eye opener in terms of learning how professionals in the [industry] think and act.  Its considerably different from any university experience I’ve had previously and it is well worth the experience.”

“Invaluable – an opportunity to be placed in a business [that] is really excited to have you and teach as much as possible.  Gives you an opportunity to work somewhere a student would usually have difficulty finding themselves.”

“It has been the best place I’ve ever worked.  Honestly, I didn’t know that such workplaces even existed…the organisational culture here is brilliant, and it’s a very exciting industry to be in at present.”

All the interns will receive recognition of their successful completion of the program with a statement on their testamur acknowledging their achievement.

Although the CIE is reluctantly discontinuing this highly successful program, a new internship program will be offered in Semester 2 to students and sponsoring companies.  Under the new scheme, students enrolled in the elective INOV4101 class will receive course credit for their work.  We are grateful to the University for supporting valuable experiential learning opportunities for these ambitious students.

We would also like to thank the UNSW Co-op Office for their generous assistance and support.

Finally, many thanks to our industry partners; we very much appreciate your continuing involvement and support, and look forward future opportunities for both students and sponsoring companies.

 

-          Atlassian

-          Homestar Finance

-          Petbarn

-          Medical Australia

-          IP Scape

-          Telcoinabox

-          NICTA

-          ResMed

Mapping Sydney's Innovation System (a pet project)

Hi Everyone,

This is a test to crowdsource mapping out Sydney's Innovation System using Google Docs and NodeXL. To start, I have added CIE and a few affiliated organizations to the initial network map:

To add yourself to the map:

• Open the raw data spreadsheet in google docs and add your (organization's) name to the "Vertices" tab.
• Add a size, roughly equivalent to how many start-ups or teams your organization represents (rule of thumb is 5-6 per team)
• Add a URL to your logo
• Add some info about you in the Tooltip column (or a URL to your homepage)

To add your affiliations to the map:

• Open the "Edges" tab in same spreadsheet
• For each affiliation, add yourself and the affiliate (make sure the spelling is the SAME as in the "Vertices" tab!)

Do NOT change the formatting or columns in the spreadsheet. Unfortunately, I could not upload the xlsx spreadsheet as is, so the map can be drawn automatically. Instead, I have to copy and paste the raw data from the google doc version into the NodeXL version to regenerate the graph. 

If the map on this page looks massively out of date, please nag us at cie@unsw.edu.au to regenerate it. We'll then update this post, and tweet about the update.

Mentoring

There is a lot of interest in mentoring these days, both from people who want to be mentored and those who want to give back and be mentors. Mentoring isn’t exactly new, though. UNSW’s Chancellor, David Gonski, was mentored by the late Kim Santow in the 70’s. We should be able to learn lessons about mentoring from our past before reinventing the wheel.


Before looking at different types of mentors, let’s take a step back and compare mentoring to coaching. If you think of a coach, you probably get the image of a sports coach, running up and down the side-lines, yelling very specific instructions to the players about where they should be and what they should do, or who they should keep an eye on. Mentoring, on the other hand, isn’t so much about providing specific instructions, as it is about asking the right questions to get the mentee to draw their on conclusion about what course of action is best. For years I volunteered with the NVBC, and co-mentored start-ups in the competition alongside Peter Parrish. Back then there was not much structure to the program other than us asking the entrepreneurs a million questions and getting them to think about what they would say to judges in the competition who might ask the same questions. These days, the NVBC mentoring program is complemented by a very structured mentoring program, operated by the regional innovation council (NVBC's title sponsor), for which Peter is now training to be a “lead mentor”.

Even though some people prefer being part of a structured program and being assigned mentors, the reality is that you (yes, you) can go out and find your own mentors, too. Having one mentor doesn’t mean you can’t have another. You don’t even need to let the person know you consider them your mentor. David Lerner’s blog has an interesting post describing varying degrees of formality to mentorship, from free and informal, through to very structured for-fee programs. Another excellent source for what it means to have or be a mentor is Nature’s guide for mentors, which even includes a self-assessment tool, to see how good a mentor you are.

This past semester, I created the opportunity for 15 teams of 5-6 students to be mentored for their business idea as part of a course I teach, STRE2010. Part way through the course, students created short youtube clips of their business pitches (e.g. Detect to Protect, much like the recent TED talk on concussions), which I then sent out to about 30 entrepreneurs who had previously expressed interest in mentoring. Within a few short days (over a weekend!), mentors had signed up to all of the teams. Teams were mentored for another 5-6 weeks through to the final pitch, done in front of a live panel of judges, consisting of entrepreneurs and investors. The feedback from the mentoring program was great. Both students and mentors really enjoyed the opportunity and engagement.

This term, we are tweaking the mentoring program and probably increasing it, due to the fantastic uptake of the revised Diploma in Innovation Management and increased enrolment in my course. Rather than pairing teams up with mentors, we will get teams to find their own mentors. This will help students learn to step outside their comfort zone, network, and pitch their business ideas to real people outside the classroom. We will of course have our own list of people we miiiiiiiight be able to put them in touch with if they really are stuggling to find mentors on their own (please let us know if you want to be added to our list). And, there are also related organizations like TiE Sydney, through which students may find mentors. (SME mentors may be found through Enterprise Connect's ELM program)

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to read our recent B-HERT article on teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in high-school, subscribe to our news and events, and follow us on Twitter.

Dr. Martin Bliemel
Director, Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
School of Strategy & Entrepreneurship
Australian School of Business, UNSW