- I think because of the rising emergence
of technology, now we see a heightened interest
in entrepreneurship from students
because many of them see these technologies
arising at a fast pace and many new opportunities
are created in the market.
And many of them ask themselves, why should I be an employee
for the rest of my life and work long hours
for somebody else when I actually can create my own startup
and be the guide of my own success.
(upbeat music)
- We know that most graduates, when they get
into the workforce, are going to have probably
about 17 different jobs and five different careers.
(upbeat music)
There's this very non-linear landscape
and there is an environment where the traditional
boundaries between sectors don't necessarily exist anymore.
- What the new generation entrepreneurs are asking now;
Things that we are doing, is it environmentally friendly,
is it acceptable to the community?
(upbeat music)
They are not just profit maximisers,
they're actually purpose maximisers
and they understand the world much better than,
I think, the earlier generation
and this is where they are starting to say,
how can I make a difference?
In the process of making the difference,
yes, I also want to be rich so that I can do better.
My grandparents who came here as migrants
were very risk-averse.
They worked in plantations.
My father who was the first generation
in this part of the world was also very risk-averse,
took safe jobs.
We were the second generation.
We played halfway in the sense that we took safe jobs,
but willing to try different things,
dabble in a little bit of entrepreneurship,
but the next generation because they've got
the comfort of safety at home,
they're willing to be part of, create, nurture,
and develop the gig economy.
- If you were looking back over the last couple
of generations, you would see people were
actually being prepared to go into careers.
(upbeat music)
Entrepreneurship is increasingly something
that students are looking at and the statistics
are saying anything from 40 to 60% of people
going through university are expressing an interest
in being an entrepreneur.
That doesn't mean they're going to go on
and be an entrepreneur, but it says something
about their mindset.
Part of that has probably come
because the job market has become more competitive.
- Well I think the statistics around why we need
to do this really come from, if we look across Europe
and look across the U.S., the economy is underpinned
by small companies that grow into large companies
and then move forward.
(upbeat music)
In Australia, we've been slow, I think,
at translating our research and starting up
these new companies.
So I think the Australian economy ultimately
is going to be dependent on companies
that we start to take advantage
of the education provided by universities
such as Monash, to use that learning,
and then to put that out into the broader community.
- We really saw a gap in that science students
were being educated in a way that was helping them
to be brilliant researchers, but wasn't helping them
to take science out into other areas of the world,
in terms of business world or into politics
and we wanted to create a degree
which would enable science students
to be able to go out and have impact in other areas
of society than they traditionally had.
- So I just graduated last month
and now I'm looking to get more involved
with BioQuisitive and similar endeavors.
I did Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Myself and a community decided
to setup BioQuisitive because we felt
like it was really hard to get
the practical experience in sciences.
We get all sorts of people coming in to,
basically, engage with science who haven't
had an opportunity to do so.
Whether they're students that are looking
for more practice, members of the public
that really want to get involved with science,
but can't, we tend to help everybody out,
including professionals in industry
who need to find a place to do some innovation
every now and then.
Like tonight, when I'm running my workshop,
I'm gonna watch a whole bunch of people
that have never done anything with science
suddenly do what would basically be considered
a third year practical over at university
in the span of six hours.
And watching their reaction to what happens
at the end of the workshop is fantastic.
The second project which I'm doing due diligence
for now is kind of like BioQuisitive,
but it's more commercial, so really servicing
the innovators out there that need a space.
It's a model that works throughout the world.
It's a science co-working space, essentially,
where people just come in and rent a bench space
that has everything they need from the equipment,
the certification of the lab, and also have access
to a community of like-minded people
with which to collaborate.
I do need to find a way to support myself
because this is quite taxing.
(laughs)
I gotta find a way somehow because, yeah,
I can't keep cleaning pools over at the casino.
- The downside of having the dream of being an entrepreneur
is, for the vast majority of people,
it's not gonna happen.
They may think they've got the best idea
available to them.
They may think it's easy to get things
into the marketplace, it isn't.
It's hard work.
It's constant development of ideas,
constant pitching those ideas and winning
the confidence of other people
and then having the opportunity to take it forward.
So I just think anyone who goes into it
just needs to have their eyes open
and know that, yes, the possibilities are rich,
but the likelihoods are limited.
Young people need heroes and they also need people
and role models to be able to aspire to
and the type of role models available now
are just different.
Professor Yunus is a great example of that.
He could have gone into any corporate environment,
but he's decided to apply himself in such a way
that ordinary people in countries
which otherwise would have faced disadvantage
are gonna have a life for the better
and lots of young people will be highly motivated by that.
- The village was next to the university campus
where I was teaching and I would go to the village
to see if there is something that I can do.
Then I become familiar with the loan sharking
in the village.
Terrible things I see everyday
that people lend tiny amount of money
and grab everything the other person has.
So one idea that I had, why don't I lend the money myself.
So I started giving money and gradually
it became very popular.
Everybody wanted to borrow money from me.
So I was very happy that it worked for people.
We converted into a bank called Grameen Bank
or Village Bank.
It's a large organisation now.
It's a nation-wide bank.
It lends out to 9 million borrowers now,
mostly women, 97% are women, extremely poor women
when they joined Grameen Bank,
gradually they improved their life
by starting a business, making a small money,
and move on, doing better.
- A new world of workers meant that universities
have to re-think the way that we are educating our students.
I think we've seen power shift from the center
to the outside and when we see that shift of power
starting to take place, it puts it in the hands
of people like our youth, other marginalised people,
and they have the potential to create
a huge disruption to business, disruption
to the economy and that disruption could be
extremely positive for our future.
- Generator was an idea that I had
probably about three years ago
and the idea was to look at ways
in which we could bring students
from different faculties together
to think about starting up companies,
to give them the kind of support they needed
to start up companies.
- It was very life-changing, a very, very
life-changing experience.
I got to meet amazing people.
I got to be exposed to the startup space.
Founding Happy Brain Education was
just the logical step on the way to trying
to make the world a better place.
We have around a thousand students
at Happy Brain Education.
We are both in Melbourne and Sydney.
We receive referrals from schools,
from the Department of Human Services, et cetera,
for our access program, which is exclusively
for students from refugee backgrounds.
We focus a lot on school subjects,
so helping students with academics
and helping them achieve their potential at school,
but we try to make up for all the gaps
in the education system, as well.
Like we try to do a lot of confidence building,
skill building, public speaking workshops,
making sure that the students are connected
to other students, making sure that the students
are involved in social projects,
extending the students beyond just what
school and academics are doing and trying
to create an ideal education system on the side
on weekends.
(laughs)
- I think human beings are not born to work
for anybody.
They are on their own.
They are independent.
They are entrepreneur.
They are creative.
And that's what their natural self is.
All these entrepreneur that I'm talking about is
of changing the world, take risk.
They want to see things differently.
They go beyond themselves.
They look at problems around them
and come with ideas how to do it in a way
that will solve the problem.
- I do want to be an entrepreneur,
but in a slightly different field.
I'm a Bharatanatyam practitioner.
It is a Indian classical dance form
and I want to start my own school of Bharatanatyam.
- Back in my country, I would like to create
a new company and start from scratch.
It will be so nice that my kids
in the future will see what I have created.
So I will really like to do that.
- Today we organised a second innovation challenge,
(upbeat music)
Monash partnering with Daisy, an artificial intelligence
provider and it was about providing students
the real life opportunity to actually pitch
to industry owners and get a slice
of life of how actually this process,
from idea to marketisation and capital raising works.
- Of course, we're not dealing with a real investment,
but never before I have think about like, okay,
I will pitch this because they need to buy my idea.
But I think it's really important
because you really get useful insights
for the future.
- If they include more subjects like these
where you have the learning which you can apply,
you can go to places, you can interview people,
you can gain experiences out of everything
that's around you.
- If you learn about entrepreneurship,
but you don't become an entrepreneur,
the organisation that you go into is gonna be better.
You're gonna learn about risk.
You're gonna learn about raising funds.
You're gonna learn about how to scrutinise ideas
and work out what the good ideas are.
You're gonna be willing to speak up
and actually present your ideas
in a very cogent and coherent way.
And any organisation that gets you
having gone through that training
is gonna have someone who's gonna be committed
to looking for solutions for the future
and helping to make that organisation better.
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