SEBASTIAAN VAN DOORN: My name is Sebastian van Doorn, and I am the coordinator for the new
Enterprise and Innovation major within the Bachelor of Business.
Today, I will explain to you what sort of topics you can expect in this program, what sort of
skills you will develop and why do these skills matter in the dynamic economic environment we find
ourselves in, in the 21st century. The Enterprise and Innovation major is a competitive program
where you work on real life projects that have an immediate imprint in the corporate landscape.
We work together with campus based organisations, such as Bloom and IQX,
to ensure we have the best possible access to industry and develop projects that matter today.
Let me start out by explaining what enterprise is, and how it is positioned in the broader
business curriculum. Enterprise is about starting and running your own business.
And should you choose to enrol in the E&I major, you will already be involved in researching the
setup of a new business of your choice in the first year of the Bachelor program.
95% of new businesses fail in their first three years of operation,
and we offer tools and insights that may help you to be part of this elusive 5% that is successful.
At the same time, we embrace a failure culture, where the first idea you have
is almost never the idea that you will develop further. Certainly as you research your ideas,
you will find that the business model you try and leverage may work better in a different sector, or
the technology that you aim to apply in your new venture may offer efficiencies to other previously
unforeseen industries, which may represent a completely new business opportunity on its own.
Combining thorough research with bold choices is at the centre of successful entrepreneurship,
and we train you to excel in these capabilities as you become more seasoned at applying the
different tools we offer throughout your journey in the E&I major. Questions we
will aim to answer during your time at UWA would include, how to research and start
a new business? How to set up the appropriate organisational structure for this new business?
How to obtain funding? How to manage growth? And, how to blend for an entrepreneurial exit?
For instance, let's consider the case of Tesla, now the most valuable automotive
manufacturer in the world. How did they first get started? Where did their ideas originate?
How did they build up production capacity? And how did they overcome market resistance, both from
established companies and the end consumer? Did you know, for instance, that it was not
Elon Musk who started the business in 2003? Did you know that his previous entrepreneurial exits
were pivotal in offering the capital and the credibility needed to build up the new business?
Did you know Tesla acquired its first large scale manufacturing facility from NUMMI, the now
dissolved joint venture between Toyota and GM, at about 10% of the initial investment by NUMMI some
25 years earlier? How do you think Tesla was able to overcome markets resistance to electric
driving? Was it their clever marketing ploy, starting with the Roadster sports convertible,
and tending to car enthusiasts? Or was it their incessant focus on improving affordability
and the range of car batteries? If these questions and answers make you tick, and you would like to
learn more about the developmental journey of other companies and potentially become an
entrepreneur yourself, or work as a corporate entrepreneur within a large organisation,
the Enterprise and Innovation major may just be the perfect academic experience for you.
Innovation is the practice of continuous renewal of the existing activities of a company.
More often than not, the current generation of products and services is at risk of becoming
obsolete or to be superseded by competitors in the short to medium term. Companies that have been
blindsided and put largely out of business in the last 30 years include Kodak, Nokia, Blockbuster,
and Myspace. And it is clear that many companies will follow given the increasingly rapid pace of
technological development, the rise of the sharing economy, the big leap towards digital and the
application of cloud services. So how can large companies innovate in time and stay competitive?
Questions that companies need to answer in daily activities, and that you will aim to answer during
your journey here at UWA are how do we engage in the strategic renewal of our existing activities?
How do we develop new products and services while still exploiting our current asset portfolio?
What sort of structures, for instance, in terms of communication channels and managerial hierarchies
should we adopt to develop and implement state of the art technologies and business models?
Which organisational actor should be involved in innovation processes and why? Which external
constituents should be considered when innovating as a large existing business? Do we go at it alone
or do we collaborate? Consider for example, the case of Apple, we know to have a strong
background in computing, but how did they succeed in revolutionising the mobile phone market? How do
they organise R&D? And, what sort of internal structures augment their technology advances
by allowing quicker than average adoption of new technologies in new products and services.
For instance, did you know Apple first tried to launch iTunes on a mobile phone in collaboration
with Motorola, and only after this project failed, did they decide to develop their own mobile phone?
And, did you know Apple leverage their expertise in mobile computing? It was actually aimed at
creating the iPad, to build the world's first smartphone. Apple is renowned for tracing and
connecting organisational knowledge and applying it when they believe the market is ready.
This allows them to often create a first mover advantage and outpace potential
competitors for years. Apple is also well known for having short communication lines
between senior management and the R&D lab, which allows better insights at management level on
opportunities that emerge in the marketplace. If these questions pique your interest,
the Enterprise and Innovation major will not disappoint. We consider different companies
in each lecture to allow students to understand the importance of context in managing successful
innovation trajectory. Our curriculum specific to the E&I major follows a two, three structure,
two courses in the first year and three and three in the second and the third year. With two courses
in Year one focusing on general management and an introductory course on enterprise and innovation.
In this introductory course, you will research and start a new venture giving you important
lessons on what works and what doesn't. Again, the E&I major provides a safe environment for
experimenting with ideas, pivoting these ideas when necessary, and ultimately coming up with
the best possible solution given the resources at your disposal, the available expertise within your
team, and the market circumstances. In the second year, we will focus on social entrepreneurship,
for instance, focusing on innovative ways of solving global issues, such as disease, famine,
poverty, social injustice, and so on. You will also get insights in how organisations learn,
how they absorb new knowledge and use this knowledge to inform future ways of working.
Be it more efficiently, more smart, more remote, or any other aspect that would
make them more successful going forward. Finally, you will learn to manage a small business and get
insights into cues for scaling that business in our small business management course.
In the final year, you will have a course on new product development and commercialisation.
And of course on enterprise systems. The course on enterprise systems will allow you to gain insights
into how software applications could make existing businesses more efficient, more agile, or more
better informed. It could also function to build an understanding for budding entrepreneurs on how
to radically transform an existing marketplace. For instance, like Uber and Airbnb have done in
different degrees of success. You will complete your E&I journey by taking the capstone unit,
which allows you to either work as an intern on a specific project with an existing start-up
or as a corporate entrepreneur in a large incumbent firm. Alternatively, you could
choose to start and run your own business during this capstone unit, allowing you to benefit from
the mentors incubator programs and accelerate our opportunities we liaise with, and get a flying
start as a start-up entrepreneur. During your time at UWA, you'll have the opportunity to engage with
a number of closely affiliated organisations, such as Bloom, IQX and Enactus. These organisations are
pivotal to the ecosystem we offer as they all engage with industry in their own unique manner.
Bloom is our on-campus co-working space where many entrepreneurial journeys have begun.
IQX is our on-campus incubator, and Enactus is a student organisation dealing with big problems in
an entrepreneurial manner. As a business school, we work closely with each of these organisations
as they provide students with opportunities to realise their entrepreneurial ambition,
both within and beyond the bounds of the business school curriculum.
So is the Enterprise and Innovation major your cup of tea? If you want to have an exciting, but
challenging job in business, geared at delivering the next generation of products and services for
large incumbent firms, or you aim to be a start-up entrepreneur yourself, the major in Enterprise
and Innovation will prepare you to excel these types of roles. Given that no organisation today
can afford to rely too long on their existing portfolio of activities, you'll be well placed
in any business after you conclude your exciting journey at the University of Western Australia.
Thank you for your attention, and I hope you choose for the major in Enterprise and Innovation.