December 5, 2024

Intrapreneurship/Entrepreneurship and Innovation Workshop

The ARC Research Hub for Australian Steel Innovation (Steel Research Hub) hosted a four-day workshop as part of a Certificate in Intra/Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UOW’s Innovation Centre from 18-21 November 2024.

14 promising young researchers and industry technologists from the universities of Wollongong and Newcastle as well as industry representatives from BlueScope and Infrabuild attended the event.

The workshop focused on equipping future technology leaders with skills to lead technological change and influence senior management decision-making and was led by Dr Tillmann Böhme, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business at the University of Wollongong, and supported by David Jenkins (Director Tri Helix Group), George Tomka and Jef Pennings (Innovation and Commercial Research UOW) and Paul Zulli (Hub Director). 

The topics covered the following:

Day 1 – Developing successful teams

Day 2 – Mapping out ideas, developing the business case, exploring your customer’s needs

Day 3 – Financing your idea, commercialising your research

Day 4 – Project planning for success, understanding your stakeholders, Pitching your idea.

On the final day, three teams pitched their early business idea to a panel for feedback. The Panel representatives included Jason Hodges (BlueScope Open Innovation & Intellectual Property Manager), Mark Eckermann (BlueScope Product Innovation Manager) and Rebecca Duldig (Business Development and Initiatives Manager iAccelerate).

After the panel had provided their formal feedback on the pitches, they spent some time with each group discussing the next steps in developing their final pitch which the teams will present at the Steel Research Hub’s Annual Symposium in February 2025.

The event was a great success and the guest speaker David Jenkins, who runs his own business in developing technical specialists into future leaders commented “I’m really impressed with the maturity and progress of the students and how much they learned within the workshop. I can't wait to see the future positive impact they will make in our world."