Futures.edu
It has been almost 12 months since I returned home from an innovation trade mission to Israel, and this year I wanted to do my part to change the education landscape. Being part of the Spark Festival Sydney committee, and leading the education track with Liz Jakubowski enabled me to help.
Much has been said about the need for the Australian educational system to provide more STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) content. In addition, a entrepreneurial mindset is needed. Entrepreneurial education underpins the culture of innovation nations like Israel, where STEAM-based activities are introduced as young as three years old, where parents see entrepreneurship as a career, where universities foster impact and commercial outcomes, and where the government supports all this in a strategic and holistic way.
I came home from that trip asking how do universities contribute to an Innovative Australia?
A part of our mission at UTS Business School and specifically our new MBA in entrepreneurship launched this year is to foster and enable an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset in future thought leaders - not to create ventures!
We can:
Launch entrepreneurs
Act as a regional catalyst
Impact the sourcing of capital
It is much more difficult to:
Launch new ventures
“Fix” an economy
Source capital
Fact: Deloitte and an internal UTS survey of 1300 respondents found that 40% of all university graduates are wanting to be employed in the open workforce (contract/freelance) or to start their own business.
However, we must embed this entrepreneurial mindset into our future generations much earlier than arriving at a University, even though at UTS we have over 40 subjects that cover entrepreneurship and innovation. In Australia, the education system needs to encourage students to pursue the entrepreneurial path. Experiential learning is a must, bringing students together with professionals who can feed real-life challenges and opportunities into the academic curriculum, working with the students to solve unmet market needs. Since visiting institutions such as Technoda (thanks to my good friend Eitan Bienstock), which attracts more than 30,000 children a year to science enrichment classes. From every ethnic group, religion and lifestyle, it is clear STEAM education can and must be accessible to everyone. So we had a template to create a series of events under the futures.edu guise.
In 2 weeks, I am proud of our effort to have 3 major events as part of Spark Festival Sydney:
25th October, 2016 - futures.edu conference is a full day conference exploring the educational entrepreneurial community. Tickets are still available, and I would encourage if interested to register ASAP to avoid disappointment. Please message me to unlock further discounts.
27th October, 2016 - STEAM Popup Awareness Space is for 12-15 year olds from lower socio-economic schools to experience science and technology in a creative environment! Think Social Robotics | Drones | AI, VR | 3D Printing | Cyber Security and Coding
28th October, 2016 - Fish Tank, 12-15 year olds from lower socio-economic schools that will learn how to present your business ideas like a serial entrepreneur. They discover how to pitch a business idea and gain the confidence and skills that’ll help start a business.
I would like to thank our supporting partners - CSIRO, MAAS Powerhouse Museum, Everything IoT and UTS Business School in providing the resources for these events to take place. As well as all our very generous supporting start-ups (too many to mention!) that are showcasing their talents for free. This generosity allows these events to reimagine the education pathways for our next generation of entrepreneurs.
Between the 22-30th October in Sydney, whether you're an entrepreneur or a wantrepreneur, a student or an educator, already working in a startup, or curious to find out more, you'll find something on the Spark Festival program & I hope to see you there!
Best, Stephen