How Australian university graduates are excelling through entrepreneurship
Australia is growing as one of the countries with the best entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, with more university graduates excelling through entrepreneurship than in other countries. This has strengthened the Australian economy, led to growth in different industries, and produced new jobs.
The Australian government focuses more on research endeavours without commercialising academic IP. This means that there’s only one path to bringing innovation, but this isn’t the only way universities have supported Australia’s job creation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Universities in Australia aren’t seeking only to educate future employees. They actively support, champion, and create a clear pathway for future employers. Over the last decade, the role of Australian universities in feeding the country’s entrepreneurial system has increased considerably. According to a study, the 41 universities in Australia offer almost 600 subjects related to entrepreneurship. This means that Australian students must write several essays and assignments and extensively research entrepreneurship. Even though they can outsource them to assignment writing help and professional essay writing services, they still get to read many entrepreneurial essays from professional writers with excellent research abilities.
People who develop new core capabilities in the university can adapt to uncertain and complicated environments while improving their self-confidence and strengthening their social networking skills. These are the basis for excellent entrepreneurial skills.
The global challenges we face, especially within societies, call for a diverse approach and perspective to create the best solutions for them. This is one of the many areas where Australia seems to be in the lead. For instance, at CSIRO, they have the “bench to boardroom scientists” that solved the radio waves problem bouncing off surfaces, leading to the creation of WiFi technology (a technology that has now revolutionised the world).
However, unlike the wireless LAN from CSIRO, the best ways to deploy new solutions to generate the maximum impact may not always be obvious. So, researchers and students must be equipped with the appropriate attitudes and entrepreneurial skills. To achieve this, universities must stimulate their bottom-up initiatives and combine them with their university-wide vision.
To solve some of the grand challenges that our societies, environments, and economies are facing worldwide, we need more people with entrepreneurial skills for an innovation paradigm.
The vision of the Australian government
The Australian government has spoken before about the importance of developing a very diverse economy to be stronger and overcome the impact of the pandemic on the economy, and this includes world-class research.
According to Alan Tudge, former Minister for Education and Youth, the country’s research output has increased by more than 400% over the last two decades, but the impact of the universities hasn’t been up to par.
He also talked about getting the academic sector more entrepreneurial and bringing innovative ideas to the market. According to him, academics are going to be rewarded properly for their engagement with businesses and their breakthroughs. So, we might even see the government IP laws to achieve this if necessary. The Australian government understands the importance of innovation activity for lifting the country’s productivity and is pushing for it.
This is why they’re also making sure that more students are engaged actively because they have a big role to play in bringing ideas and developing the country’s economy further. Hence, the government’s focus on University researchers doesn’t consider the whole community and the amount of talent available across the pool of universities to achieve this goal.
Due to the Federal National Innovation Science Agenda in 2015, the government has introduced generous tax incentives for venture capitalists and angel investors and other financial supports like entrepreneur visas. This is because they understand that high-growth technology businesses are a major part of the country’s economic growth.
It’s now common knowledge that financing start-ups can drive innovation further and increase the link between entrepreneurs and universities.
When it comes to creating knowledge, Australian universities stand out. There have been excellent results with research commercialization between Cochlear and CSL and Gardasil eradicating cervical cancer. Universities have played a massive role in delivering innovations in our thinking and the direction that science can take.
Student innovation and entrepreneurship are good ways to ensure these ideas get to the market. Now universities are paying more attention to this area and investing more than before. The goal now is to create future employers, not just employees.
For instance, UNSW Sydney has a Founders Program program; The University of Queensland (UQ) has UQ Ventures. There are also UTS Startups and many other similar programs across different universities in Australia. The people who have gone through this program say that the entrepreneurial soft and hard skills they learned from the university program have the platform to create and launch their ideas into the market.
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship has become a major theme for Australian universities. Hence, Australian University graduates have all the tools to become successful entrepreneurs, which has helped them excel.