How an innovation mindset transformed Cooper McLean’s career

How an innovation mindset transformed Cooper McLean’s career 

When Cooper McLean enrolled in a Bachelor of Business at UTS, he wasn’t sure what sort of career he wanted to pursue. It wasn’t until he discovered the Diploma in Innovation, a six-month add-on qualification available to students across UTS, that his trajectory started to take shape. 

“I started the Diploma because I thought it might help me launch my own business in the future. I discovered a love for the venture capital world, intrapreneurship and the whole start-up environment.”

From industry briefs to an industry career 

The Diploma in Innovation is a bespoke qualification from the UTS TD School, a global leader in transdisciplinary education and research. 

Students take on briefs from industry partners and work alongside organisations of all shapes and sizes to build skills in innovation, systems thinking, and entrepreneurship and address real business challenges. 

Despite the vastly different teaching and learning approaches of the UTS Business School and the TD School, Cooper could see clear links between his Bachelor of Business and the expertise he was building in the Diploma. 

“My Business degree helped me understand corporate structure, finance, and marketing from a corporate perspective, while my Diploma challenged me to see business with the creativity and a growth mindset needed to scale a company,” says Cooper. 

Bringing innovation in-house 

That path led him to a consulting career, first with Jacobs and later with GHD, which came about through the professional network he built during his degree. 

Today, Cooper is a commercial advisor for GHD, a professional services network that specialises in large-scale engineering, environmental, design, and construction projects. 

While GHD is far from being a start-up — the company was established in 1928 and now boasts offices in 14 countries across the globe ­— Cooper says the skills he gained during the Diploma were instrumental to getting his foot in the door and to building his reputation within the company.

“I think it was an added value, especially for the roles I went for. I was able to talk about entrepreneurship in a way that my team were really interested in, and it helped me progress internally as well,” he says. 

Over the last three years, Cooper has risen through GHD’s ranks, moving from product development and corporate strategy to providing commercial advice across renewable energy. Now based in the company’s London office, he routinely applies his innovation skills to a wide range of projects across the water, energy and resources sectors. 

For example, he says, in one of his early roles, he was tasked with identifying new ideas and bringing them to market using sprint and start-up methodologies to progress and test them. 

“One specific project that I worked on was an internal secondment role into our Future of Water strategic initiative,” he says. 

“I was working within our PMO team to set up the process for managing innovation within our business, so employees can propose ideas, test and scale them. 

“Our PMO team managed around 11 new business ideas through this process. Five have been funded in multiple rounds to scale into global business propositions.”

Back to where it all began

Cooper is now part of GHD’s client-side team, where he works with investors, companies and start-ups looking to scale new climate technology products. Even in this new professional context, the practices that informed his earlier innovation work remain as relevant as ever.  

“Innovation and startup principles aren’t only for company founders. Being agile, failing fast and then trying again — these are skills that will always be valuable in any work environment.”

While he’s enjoying life in London and at GHD, lately, Cooper has found himself thinking about the next iteration of his career. In the coming years, he sees himself returning to Australia and finally bringing that vision of launching his own business to life.

Now, he has not only entrepreneurial skills and specialist experience in the energy sector but also a genuine belief in the work. 

“When I was younger, I always wanted to start a business, but it was always focused on making money. Now I’ve realised there’s a lot more impact I can make,” he says. 

“I’m focused on getting as much experience as I can here, eventually coming home and turning my expertise into something that is both profitable and meaningful.”

If you are a current UTS student and you want to find out more

Please note: the Diploma of Innovation is only available to current undergraduate UTS students (excluding those undertaking the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence). 

If you are a current UTS student, our next information session is on Thursday 21 May (12:15 - 1:15 pm). Further details are available here.