New Venture Institute Awards

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (15:53): Recently, I was very fortunate to represent minister Close, Minister for Innovation and Manufacturing, at the Flinders University New Venture Institute Venture Dorm eNVIes award night. The evening celebrated the graduation and success of the Venture Dorm participants for 2014. Venture Dorm aims to turn business ideas into reality. Flinders University New Venture Institute was established to support students and aspiring entrepreneurs to develop their commercialisation skills, and provide a gateway for the business community to connect with Flinders University's research community, and to assist university staff to connect with commercial and research opportunities beyond the university.

Excitingly for me, as the member for Elder, this New Venture Institute will relocate to Tonsley ready for business in the new year, and it will be within the new Flinders University complex. This will be co-located with the School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics, the Medical Device Research Institute, the Centre for NanoScale Science and Technology and Flinders Partners. Venture Dorm is a program run through the New Venture Institute and provides a 12-week educational environment for people wanting to learn how to build their own viable business based on the experience and expertise of how entrepreneurs build new ventures.

The program also supports participants to find an idea and a viable business model which is scalable and repeatable, achieving all of this in less than 12 weeks. The program combines both theory and, importantly, practice, and uses a flipped classroom way of teaching. Venture Dorm is a hands-on, learner-centred, inquiry-based, immersive and experiential process.

Students learn principles of Lean Startup and customer development and the Business Model Canvas to search for a business model that works. Participants are also facilitated in de-risking their business model, finding users and partners, while being connected with mentors who have been down this path and succeeded. Venture Dorm is not an accelerator where seed money is available to build a business, although alumni are encouraged to join an accelerator if they wish. The program helps participants to develop the mindset and skills to survive the rollercoaster world of new venture creation.

On this graduation and awards night, the room was filled with students, teachers and successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople with expertise in start-up and venture capital. We were all witness to some amazing and inspirational projects. Just some of the remarkable projects were gold and silver eNVIe award recipients, namely, Plumbers Mate and Eternal Memoria respectively, with Travel Buddies gaining the popular audience vote. Plumbers Mate developed a highly marketable commercial water valve, and Scott Perry, the developer of the product, launched a convincing pitch on the night.

He was followed by Nazir Rasheed, of Eternal Memoria, as he convinced the judges that he deserved second place with his innovative headstone addition of a Q Reader. His idea was to provide information about a deceased family member, which, after being recorded and stored, can be retrieved on demand by way of a mobile phone with a Q Reader app. The audience choice award to Travel Buddies recognised the development of a global network of people willing to show a traveller real-life experience in their home country, so travellers were not just a mere tourists but really had the benefit of experiencing the local culture.

My discussions with businesspeople in the audience, who were there to mix with the finalists and assess the commercial readiness and viability of graduate ideas, were ones of energetic enthusiasm. There was a general view amongst these local experienced and successful entrepreneurs that a significant commercial pathway for South Australia's future was by way of start-up ventures. They highlighted South Australia's suitability for such commercial activity for start-up company ventures, citing such factors as appropriate culture being one conducive to incubating start-ups, with a population of 1.6 million being the right size for this type of business activity, and South Australia's strong history of customer focus. They also commented that, in addition to this, South Australia had a track record of being a state of many firsts.

This gathering was compelling, with its credentialled attendees and some significant players of our state present. They are stepping up, they are optimistic, they are energised for our future, they believe in South Australia.