Venture Dorm Graduation

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (15:45): Today, I rise to speak on the incredible activity and work happening in the inner southern seat of Elder, particularly within the growing dynamic precinct of Tonsley and, specifically, the Flinders University campus. The Tonsley precinct now asserts around 112 businesses, with Sage Automation and Zeiss set to make this area home in the very near future, and I am told there are nearly 1,000 people employed on this particular Tonsley precinct at the moment, and that is set to grow.

This site is certainly a good-news story of transformational change as we see business, education, retail, and, soon, residential housing co-locating in this area. Within the building of the Flinders University faculty—which I understand will be joined by its twin tower in the near future—is the New Venture Institute. Within this institute is an exciting incubator for ideas, enthusiasm and people of entrepreneurial spirit who gather here to develop and bring their conceptual ideas to life within what is known as the Venture Dorm. In particular, today I will highlight the culmination of the solid, focused work by students, mentors and staff of the Venture Dorm during the night of all nights, the graduation night, known as the eNVIes, where all involved come together to celebrate their achievements over the last 12 weeks.

The vision and mission of this exciting New Venture Institute is to reinvent the way the university creates impact within the state and the world while inspiring bold new ways of thinking and educating for the careers of tomorrow, and industries of the future, while connecting business, research and students. All this is underpinned by a value foundation of boldness, innovation and collaboration.

The New Venture Institute is the base of innovation and entrepreneurship at Tonsley's Flinders University and has three main streams of activity, with the focal point of asset activation of the university, with the goal to create added value in our local community and on a wider national and international stage. The streams that are offered with value-add in mind are those of business engagement, experiential education and new venture creation and business support. Business engagement ensures collaboration and engagement between business students and the university, facilitating and enabling students to develop the necessary capabilities.

Experiential education assists, guides, and provides mentors with the ability to help students develop and deliver topics within schools and to provide real-world and real-time industry problems, challenges and opportunities. Students work alongside CEOs and executives to gain an appreciation of knowledge application in creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial problem solving and value creation. The third stream is that of new venture creation and business support, which supports students and the broader community to create and grow start-ups, as well as support existing businesses to grow through business innovation and entrepreneurial workshops.

I now turn my focus to the Venture Dorm offered through the New Venture Institute, which provides an educational environment to people wishing to learn how to be entrepreneurs, to build new ventures and to create them themselves. The aim of the Venture Dorm is for participants to take an idea, find a viable business model, which is scalable and repeatable, and develop it from beginning to completion over a 12-week period. Teaching is hands-on, learner-centred, inquiry-based, immersive and experiential. The program develops the mindset and skills to survive the rollercoaster world of new venture creation with experience gained for life. Venture Dorm has been operating since 2013, during which time over 360 entrepreneurs have been mentored and taught and 194 microbusinesses have been launched—an extraordinary outcome.

A few weeks ago, on a Tuesday night, I was privileged to represent the Premier at the night of all nights, the eNVIe awards at the Adelaide Town Hall. It is always a high-energy and inspirational night. At the event, six finalists were competing for over $100,000 worth of prizes. There were six new businesses that pitched: Post Dining, City ReCycle, The Word at Birth, partbox, Flawless Clothing, Nailbreak, and they all had an incredible pitch. The gold winner for that night was Emily Hanna, from Nailbreak; coming second with the silver award was partbox, Colin Kelly; and the People's Choice Award went to City ReCycle instigated by Josh Garratt.

It is certainly an amazing night to attend, and if any of you have the opportunity to do so I highly recommend it because you get to mix with so many entrepreneurs and inspirational people.