This is the transcript for the video What kind of projects are explored in the Diploma in Innovation?
Paul Brown (00:00):
So the typical projects done by students into the primary innovation range widely, depending on what the student’s preferences are. And also depending on who our industry partners are. So usually for every school that we run, we usually have one or two key industry partners whom are available for students to co-design projects with. And so I’ll give you a couple of examples, so one would be in the course, Navigating Entrepreneurial Ecosystems, we regularly work with people in the local tech central ecosystem. So UTS is positioned in a great spot in the city, right amongst a whole bunch of really cutting-edge organizations. And so for that particular project, we tend to work with policymakers as well as key players in the innovation ecosystem. And so what students will do is that they’ll work with and talk with industry partners and then go and find other members of the innovation ecosystem and really do a deep dive into eco, what’s working really well, how the system works.
And during this process, students will always come up with a range of ideas as to how the system can be perhaps improved a little bit. And so the students will feed this information back to key stakeholders who are always super excited to learn from the students. And the feedback that we’ve received from our industry partners and stakeholders has been overwhelmingly positive. And they will usually come back every single year to help students to evolve and us to evolve our understanding of the Australian International Innovation Ecosystem. Other subjects tend to be framed up with a industry partner who holds a problem, which is so complex and so difficult that they don’t know how to solve it, and we don’t know how to solve it. And what we do is that we work with students to address and understand these really complex and difficult problem spaces in collaboration with our industry partner. And so that might include the industry partner coming in and talking with the students. It might involve the students going out into a field trip and it will involve a lot of stakeholder engagement.
And then during this process, we help our industry partners better understand these complex problem spaces and then help them calibrate what they can do. And also, students will often come up with their own little ideas and their own side projects during this process. For example, I think last year in one of our subjects we worked with representatives from the City of Sydney and the Australian Social Economy and Waste Ecosystem to come up with a whole bunch of ways in which the Australian system can evolve more efficiently and effectively. And students really enjoy this process. And some of our industry partners are still in contact with us and are keen to pursue more projects with students that they work with during the course and also with new students as they come through.