Published on the 18/12/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
Teaching entrepreneurship to Australians has suddenly become a very hot topic for the nation’s leading tertiary institutions with both undergraduate and Masters courses proliferating…
The University of Technology Sydney’s coup this year in securing Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak as an adjunct professor, was followed by the November launch of The Hatchery intended to provide UTS undergraduates and research students with the skills needed to start their own businesses.
As the Wozniak appointment shows, the universities aren’t relying on academics to teach entrepreneurship. UTS this year secured IBM Australia’s former research director Professor Glenn Wightwick as deputy vice chancellor, while Dr Peter Binks, formerly the CEO of Nanotechnology Victoria has been appointed foundation director of the newly announced Wade Institute for Entrepreneurship at the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College.
Other entrepreneurship teaching ventures include Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Entrepreneurship Research, Swinburne University’s entrepreneurship and innovation business degree, and the University of Adelaide’s online Masters in entrepreneurship.
Meanwhile a number of other universities have established early stage venture capital limited partnerships in order to invest in and take an equity slice of student start-ups. Wollongong University and the University of Queensland have both gone down this path.
Access to funds however is only part of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
According to Binks too many entrepreneurs have had to learn lessons the hard way. The one-year Masters at Wade, which is still in design and won’t kick off until February 2016, is intended to be a practical course equipping budding entrepreneurs with the skills (including dealing with failure) and networks needed to get a start-up off the ground.
At the end of the first semester students will have to present a pop up business; by the end of the second they will have the chance to pitch it to potential investors.
According to Binks, who said that the nation had traditionally ranked poorly in terms of its ability to convert patents to revenue: “Australia has an urgent need to take steps to strengthen the economy…and create new generations of leaders.”
