ACT Pins Hopes on Innovation
- 06 July, 2004 10:42
- Comments
The ACT Government and University of Canberra are pinning their hopes on innovation and creativity to secure the Canberra region’s long-term economic prosperity.
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope earlier this month opened the University of Canberra Innovation Centre (UCIC), intended to be a focus for the interaction between high level education, business and consultancy, and the R&D endeavours of the University and a range of outside organizations.
The new integrated research and technology Centre seeks to build on UC’s success in the area of professional advancement and postgraduate studies, and advances in research — and particularly that with clear application and relevance. UC has been involved in innovation centre type projects since 1996, when it opened its first Innovation Centre designed to assist entrepreneurial researchers to establish spin off companies to commercialise their intellectual property.
Known as UCIC, the new centre — already fully leased — is expected to become an integrated research and technology centre that will allow for individual businesses to operate within. Tenants include Emergency Management Australia, the University’s Professional Management Program, the University of Canberra College, Centre for Customs and Excise and the Retro Cafe.
The UC Innovation Centre is a modern, high technology centre, dedicated to productive partnerships, university-industry interaction and business growth. It is a unique professional space for investigation, discovery and innovation. It seeks to enhance the intellectual environment for advanced technologies to facilitate new products and ideas for communities and industry. It is also positioning itself as the place of the future for progressive research-based companies.
In opening the Centre Stanhope lauded the University’s renewed commitment to developing successful partnerships with local business.
“The University of Canberra and my Government share a vision of ‘Partnerships for Growth’.
“The economic future of the ACT depends on an ability to commercially exploit our significant knowledge assets. We must work together to ensure we better spin-off local research and development achievements,” he says. The Government’s Canberra Plan and its component Economic White Paper identify the importance of innovation and creativity to our long-term economic prosperity. The government is working to capitalize on key growth areas including ICT, biotechnology, defence industries, education export and environmental management. The Chief Minister says the Government is backing the potential of these industries to foster sustainable economic growth where everyone in the Territory will ultimately benefit.
“The Economic White Paper commits my Government to cultivating innovation through a series of actions. The $10 million Commercialisation Fund, announced in this year’s budget, and the continuation of the extremely successful Knowledge Fund stand at the forefront of this commitment to innovation. The opening of this centre marks the common vision between the University of Canberra and the ACT Government. It is a considerable step forward in the growth of a local knowledge-based economy.”
The Centre includes high-speed communications, a state-of-the-art training centre for computer and business graduates, a shared boardroom, conference room, coffee shop and exhibition facilities. It is a unique professional space for investigation, discovery and innovation.
UC Innovation Centre will enhance the intellectual environment for advanced technologies, to facilitate new products and ideas for communities and industry.
The University is using the centre to woo progressive research-based companies, and is determined to establish interactive partnerships between major business and research enterprises and higher education throughout the capital region.
The new Innovation Centre is the first stage of a four-stage plan. When the other three stages come to fruition, a sky-lit street that will provide a central space around which the complex revolves will link them. Together, they will house about 1000 people.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
-
Six ways to reduce expenses using ERP
-
All Systems Down
-
CIO of CSC deploys social collaboration platform
-
IT workers are happy, but will still leave for something better
-
30 days with Ubuntu Linux, day 3: Where's my iTunes?
-
Case Study: Danske Bank Group improves efficiency and reduces time to market
Danske Bank Group wanted to deliver new services faster. It sought to reduce time to market from approximately 14 months to nine months and increase IT development efficiency by 10 percent. Find out more. -
Oracle BPM Suite 11g: BPM without Barriers
Over the years vendor specialists built tools to simplify a subset of the overall complex process like workflow, or enterprise application integration. Business process management suite software introduced the promise of a comprehensive solution to manage all enterprise processes and to do so with greater efficiency. Read on. -
Beverage Distributor Virtualises Data Centre: A case study
Low cost servers, used for applications such as sales force automation and workgroup collaboration, had contributed to server sprawl, causing the data center to outgrow available power and cooling capacity. Server virtualisation helped but had begun to slow network performance. “We wanted 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity without the expense of building a new data center,” says Rory Regan, network and telecom manager, Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated. “We decided to build a new data center network that would continue to work with our existing servers and storage as we gradually migrated to a unified fabric.” Read this case study
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
Comments
Post new comment