School:University of Technology Sydney

Overview

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) was founded in 1988 and is located in Sydney's tech precinct in NSW, Australia. A modern focus and a drive for innovation has enabled UTS to quickly climb global rankings, UTS jumped almost 200 places in the Times Higher Education rankings over the last seven years (2012-2019) and remains the number one young university (under 50) in Australia

UTS is known as a world leader in transdiciplinary approaches and sustainable futures thinking, with over 45,000 students and almost 4,000 staff. 

An industry focus with modern courses and state-of-the-art equipment has enabled its degrees and students continue to become more respected worldwide. UTS has shown a passion to continue this movement through its 1 Billion dollar investment to fundamentally change the way that teaching, learning and research is delivered.

UTS Values

UTS is lead by five distinct values that shape the vision and strategy of the university: Discover, Engage, Empower, Deliver and Sustain. 

Discover and share new knowledge and new ways to lead through teaching, research, intellectual debate and use of technology. 

Engage and collaborate with students, alumni, partners, professions and communities locally and internationally.

Empower staff and students to grow, challenge and make a difference.

Deliver obligations to staff, students, partners and communities while maintaining high standards and ethical behaviour. 

Sustain local and global environment, organisational health and the ability to create a positive and viable future. 

Promoting Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Degrees and Programs

UTS offers a range of subjects both for undergraduate and postgraduate students that explore the foundations of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. These subjects are designed in a way that students from a vast range of study areas can access to the various forms of ‘design thinking’ based subjects.

As a key component of Vision 2027, student innovation and entrepeneurship is seen as critical to the sucess of students and the university with over 90 distinct subjects that engage I&E principles. UTS recognises eight academic pathways where students can interact with innovation and entrepeneurship as follow.

Entrepreneurial Subjects

Sub-Majors

Online Entrepeneurship Content

Bachelor Degrees

Postgraduate Degrees

Diplomas and Certificates

Business Practice Unit Short Courses

International Opportunities

The faculties that facilitate these pathways include:

Engineering and Information Technology

Business

Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation

Design, Architecture and Building

Arts and Social Sciences

Institute for Sustainable Futures

Science

Law

More information can be found here.

UTS StartNet Map

These pathways are supported by a wider culture of innovation that encourages students to convert creativity in entrepreneurial endeavors. The following UTS StartNet Map explores how entrepreneurial programs and culture are found across several faculties in the univeristy.

Cultural Pathways Fostering Entrepreneurship 

UTS is located in Ultimo which is one of the most heavily populated Start-Up areas in Australia. Leveraging this, it has become one of the most innovative and entrepreneurial campuses in Australia. There are various programs implemented by UTS to encourage student entrepreneurship including:

UTS Startups, which is an incubator aimed at mentoring and providing support for any student or recent alumni interested in developing a startup

Awards like UTS Startup peoples choice, Venture Day and many others are aimed at providing extra funding to standout startups

Student-run Innovation and Entrepreneurial Societies on Campus e.g. Enactus & BCII Connect

Hackathons & competitions including Project Pitch, Code2Learn, The Hult Prize and IBISWorld 3P Competition, designed to launch competitive businesses

There are over 160 Incubators, accelerators and pre-accelerators in Australia, however these remain expensive and less acessible to UTS students. As such UTS seeks to promote a culture of entrepreneurship by embedding such thinking in coursework and existing degree programs alongside the startup community. 

Each of these programs are trans-disciplinary, with no limitations or restrictions to certain faculties, degree types or year levels. The culmination of each of these has enabled UTS to become an active player in the Australian Start-Up Community. 

Over the past three years, UTS has also introduced Bachelor and Postgraduate degrees that directly target the core fundamentals of high-level critical and creative thinking, invention, complexity, innovation, future scenario building and entrepreneurship; leading-edge capabilities that are highly valued in the globalised world. A direct industry demand has contributed to the successful implementation of such a vast and diversified portfolio that allows students to combine their core degree (e.g. Business, Engineering) with an innovational based degree.

Encouraging Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

As a component of the 2027 Vision, UTS is committed to supporting staff with research and learning with a goal of seamless, personalized and relevant education. While staff are also encouraged to engage with industry partners and through innovative research there are fewer resources for startups and entrepreneurship for faculty. Where students (undergraduate and postgraduate) own their own Intellectual Property (IP)  from research projects, IP generated by faculty members belongs to the university.

UTS Startups allows faculty to participate if one member of the team is a student. This limits opportunities for external innovation. However, there is a significant focus on encouraging innovation in the classroom environment and through industry partnerships. Opportunities to enhance learner experience (LX) and support academics in the transition to digital learning platforms such as the <LX.lab, futures blogand online support platforms. These resources are designed to help academics build knowledge and confidence within the learning.futures mandate. Successful industry partnerships are well recognized across the university and celebrated through technology transfer, and licensing opportunities. 

Opportunities at UTS

UTS has provided a huge range of different opportunities to help students grow and develop their passion for both Innovation and Entrepreneurship. These include,

Hackathon Weekends such as:

• Project Pitch (Weekend Long Competition to create, test and launch Start-Ups, with over $10,000 in prize money)
• 3P Competition (Competition run by the Business Faculty focusing on People, Planet & Profit with over $20,000 in prize money)

Entrepreneurial Based Student Societies Including,

• Australian Collaborative Entrepreneurial Society (ACES) Focused on creating Entrepreneurship activities for students.
• BCII Connect, a student society dedicated to creating a community for and around students of the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation.

Facilitating University - Industry Collaboration

UTS has a strong relationship with its industry sponsors. The freshly introduced Bachelor of Technology and Innovation degree launched in 2017 was a result of high industry demand. UTS is constantly coupling up with their partners to host innovation and enter centered.

UTS has its own on-campus start-up incubator, a founding partnership with Sydney School of Entrepreneurship, through which individuals have the opportunity to get in touch and communicate with other like minded individuals as well as kickstart their startup ambitions. UTS also effectively collaborates with industry partnership to contribute to the wider growth of its students. This year UTS has introduced an internship program with its partners EnergyLab, Fishburners and Microsoft to offer 20 students internships in the startup sector, to essentially give these proactive individuals an insight into the startup environment and help them form those entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets in a more practical setting whilst also incentivise them by contributing their achievements as credit points towards their university degree.  Alongside the university also offers Scholarships sponsored by its partnerships namely (Metal Trades Industry Association of Australia (MTIA) specifically tailored around entrepreneurship and innovation (John Heine Memorial Foundation Scholarship in Entrepreneurial Engineering)

This university also has a reputation for being an extremely practical university, focusing on and encouraging industry placements, internships and practical experience throughout courses. This focus has enabled university students to better understand the job market and get real life experience throughout their degree.

Engaging with regional and local economic development efforts

Start-Up Successes at UTS

UTS’s constant support and entrepreneurial education has assisted may students develop million-dollar start-up companies straight out of university. Some of the companies developed and formed in the UTS environment include:

• Cube rider, which is the first private Australian company to put satellites in space
• Wine stash, which is predicted to exceed profits of 3 million dollars during its fourth year.
• Cloud Construction, who won the 2016 Virginia Tech Challenge Pitch in the U.S. Read more about this here

UTS has a redesigned innovation and entrepreneurship program, called UTS Startups (formally UTS Hatchery), where students can get their idea of the ground. Having partnered with Fishburners, an Australian tech startup community, students are able to bring their ideas in the real world, and bridge the gap between studying entrepreneurship and getting a startup off the ground. Read more about their partnership.

On top of this, as part of UTS's campus vision, several new technology labs and prototyping spaces have opened, including the UTS ProtoSpace, Data Arena and Tech Lab. These resources will be used to not only support student startups, research projects and postgraduate study, but also give staff and students the opportunity to work with some of the latest, cutting edge technology on offer and engage in sponsored partnerships with external companies in developing the solutions of tomorrow.

Landscape Canvas

2018-2019 Landscape Canvas

2017-2018 Landscape Canvas

2016-2017 Landscape Canvas

Related Links

UTS Student Priorities

UTS Startups Home Page

UTS Facebook Page

UTS UIF Facebook Page

See the 2018 Autumn (Fall) UTS UIF video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13KUDvclG4M

UIF @ UTS

Spring 2019 Business	Spring 2019 FEIT	Autumn (Fall) 2018	Spring 2018	Spring 2017
Link you name to your wiki page	SienaReynolds	Nicholas Berriman	Laurence Presland	Matthew Childs
	Joshua Keegan	Georgia McCarthy	Alastair Bate	Peter Cole
		Jacob Vartanian	James Ryan	Irene Hsieh
		Kritika Khanna	Gavan Huang	Corey Stewart