The value of ‘intrapreneurship’

At UTS we believe entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting a startup. We believe bringing valuable curricular and co-curricular opportunities to the 40 per cent of students who want to create their own career pathways is about sparking the next generation of founders and leaders. An entrepreneurial career has potential for graduates to create their own job, working for themselves or as a corporate innovator.

Whether you like the term ‘intrapreneurship’ or not, it has now become key to business longevity in the face of accelerating technological change.

In a future work landscape, every employee will be expected to have an entrepreneurial mindset and contribute to the innovation capability of their company.

The skillsets and mindsets required in entrepreneurship – creativity, collaboration, communication, resilience, empathy, problem solving – have been earmarked as ‘future of work’ appropriate skills.

These evergreen, lifelong skills will set graduates apart for new roles in the corporate world, enabling them to lead productive, positive change within an organisation.

By identifying and developing new business opportunities and ventures, new products or services, or new strategic directions, intrapreneurs are crucial for businesses to remain competitive well into the future.

Developing an entrepreneurial culture

However, business disruption does not just happen thanks to one single intrapreneur. Successful innovation-led organisations set themselves apart by making an entrepreneurial mindset part of their culture – rewarding initiative and independent thinking, and encouraging experimentation and learning.

They are also connected with external partners, including universities and research institutions, to build an ecosystem that taps into the new ideas and talent that these partners provide.

As part of this ecosystem, we wholeheartedly welcome corporate partners into our entrepreneurship world for the support and expertise they can provide our student offering.

However, we also believe our highly skilled students, plus the environments and methodologies we offer for new idea generation, can be priceless to industry, creating a genuine value exchange.

From hackathons and startup weekends, to bootcamps, workshops, talks, pitch events and co-designed innovation challenges, we are very proud of the corporate partner collaborations we have established so far.

In the experiences they allow us to offer students, and the insights and talent partners have benefited from, we’re confident we have delivered wins all round.

A massive thank you to the likes of:

– Ericsson, who regularly runs hackathons with our Faculty of Engineering and IT and works with students on real-world problems and solutions (see case study, page 22).

– KWM, partners for the recent #breakinglaw hackathon.

– Optus, Telstra, Google and Wisetech, who have supported our Sydney Women Startup Weekends with judging, mentoring, plus financial and in-kind resources, empowering budding female founders.

– Microsoft and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, who have provided mentoring for our startups.

– AI firm Daisee, who supported our Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation’s Women in Data Science event, which included student masterclasses and high profile speakers.

We would love to welcome you as a corporate partner within the UTS entrepreneurship ecosystem, and become part of yours to help your company thrive in the future of work.