Kah Chan and Dr Edgar Rodriguez from Victoria’s School of Design both possess a blend of skills that combine scholarly excellence with a head for business—they are able to come up with innovative research ideas and also have the ability to identify commercial opportunities.
Kah and Edgar are two of the brains behind the Victoria Entrepreneur Bootcamp, a summer programme where up to 50 students from all disciplines across the University who have finished an undergraduate degree, work together in groups to build a business based on a commercially viable idea.
The Bootcamp offers the possibility of funding to create a start-up company at the end of the intensive programme. In previous years, several teams have gone on to form their own companies.
“One company that has emerged recently from the Bootcamp is Swibo,” explains Edgar, who is the Programme Director for Industrial Design. “That company manufactures balance boards that double as game controllers to be used in physical rehabilitation.”
Victoria’s School of Design is also the only design institution involved in the government funded Medical Technologies Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE).
“Innovation in medical technologies is a growing area,” says Edgar. “There is strong evidence people improve better at home and governments would like to see more people out of hospital and using home-based care, so that’s a source of some huge opportunities in terms of designing products. There are teams of clinicians and bio-engineers working within the centre, but being the only design team, our role is to help them focus on the human experience so we can create devices that work as effectively as possible.”
Kah, who lectures in Media Design and specialises in game and interaction design, says working with external parties is vitally important. “It raises awareness of the capability of the University and it exposes us to industry by showing what we can do, rather than just working in silos. It’s our chance to get out there and make things that have a real world implication.
“We also work closely with many other schools within Victoria University—that interdisciplinary focus is really important to us.
“There’s so much innovation going on within various areas of research here,” says Kah. “It’d be great to see more academics take their ideas further and create successful ventures.”
You can find out more about the Victoria Entrepreneur Bootcamp programme on Facebook.