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Sydney, Australia

Section 1 /
p. 3 GENERAL INFORMATION

Section 2 /
p. 4 CASE STUDY PROFILE

Section 3 /
p. 6 IMPLEMENTATION & FUNDING

Section 4 /
p. 9 OUTCOMES & IMPACT

Section 5 /
p. 12 LESSONS LEARNED

Section 6 /
p. 13 FURTHER INFORMATION
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

GENERAL
INFORMATION
Title of the case Herding cats to co-create cross-university courses in record
time

Sales pitch An example of how 8 academics across 4 universities, supported


by staff at the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship co-developed a
world-first course about entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Organisation(s) University of Technology Sydney (UTS)


Charles Sturt University (CSU)
Macquarie University (MacQ)
UNSW Sydney (UNSW)
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (SSE)

Country / countries Australia

Date January 2019

Author(s) Martin Bliemel (UTS)


Jochen Schweitzer (UTS)
Alejandra Mery Keitel (UTS)
Roy Green (UTS)
Lorraine Nicolas (UTS, then SSE)
Morgan Miles (CSU)
Lara Moroko (MacQ)
Lars Groeger (MacQ)
Selena Griffith (UNSW)

Nature of interaction Please select one or more of the following (simply place an “x”
between the brackets):
[ ] Collaboration in R&D
[ ] Academic mobility
[ ] Student mobility
[ ] Commercialisation of R&D results in science
[ ] Lifelong learning
[x] Curriculum development and delivery
[ ] Entrepreneurship
[ ] Governance
[x] Other (please specify): Inter-institutional collaboration

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

Supporting Please select one or more of the following (simply place an “x”
mechanism between the brackets):
[x] Strategic instrument
[ ] Structural instrument or approach
[x] Operational activity
[ ] Framework condition

CASE STUDY
PROFILE
1. SUMMARY
The Navigator, a core unit of the new AUD$25 million state-funded Sydney School of
Entrepreneurship (SSE), provides an example of how a new course is co-developed and co-
delivered by an interdisciplinary group of academics across multiple universities to multiple
cohorts of students from all 12 higher-education institutions (HEIs) across the State of New
South Wales (NSW). What is unique about this course is the extremely diverse inter-
organisational environment hosted by SSE and the speed at which the unit was designed,
often adjusted only hours ahead of delivery. While the operational details of SSE still require
attention, the cross-institutional collaboration to develop The Navigator is recognised as best-
practice in co-development of state- or even nation-wide curriculum.

2. BACKGROUND
Understanding the context of this course and its learning objectives requires understanding
the context of the new Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (SSE) through which it was
designed and delivered.

Background to SSE: In February 2016, Nick Kaye was invited to give a talk to the NSW
Chief Scientist Mary O'Kane about his decade-long experience in running the Stockholm
School of Entrepreneurship in Sweden. The Swedish school’s claim to fame was that it had
been a key contributor to the formation of multiple startups that evolved into multi-million or
even billion-dollar companies, and thus was positioned as a strategic policy instrument for
economic development. By June 2016, the NSW State Government announced “A new
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (SSE) will be established with a [AUD]$25 million
investment aimed at placing NSW at the epicentre of entrepreneurship in the Asia-Pacific
region” (Berejiklian, 2016). By July, a follow-up announcement was made, that “The NSW
Government has secured the Executive Director of the Stockholm School of
Entrepreneurship, Nick Kaye, to head up the new Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (SSE)”
(Roberts & Barilalo, 2016).

Around the same time, there was a rise in state government support for incubators,
accelerators, hubs and other manifestations of entrepreneurial ecosystem support, as shown
in Figure 1. Each of these organisations also provided direct co-curricular but structured
support for early stage entrepreneurship, many of which received funding support from
federal or state governments.

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

Figure 1: The rise of startup support organisations in Australia (Source: Bliemel, 2018)

Background to the educational development process via SSE: There were two critical
differences between Stockholm and Sydney’s SSE. In Stockholm, SSE represented a
collaboration of 5 universities that were all local. Moreover, each university was effectively
mono-disciplinary except the University of Stockholm (e.g., Konstfack is focused on arts and
design, Karolinska Institutet is focused on medicine, KTH on engineering). Each university
lacked the capability to offer multi-disciplinary entrepreneurship courses, especially from a
multi-disciplinary approach. In addition, universities in Sweden had a strong tradition of
cooperation to better leverage sometimes limited educational resources such as a multi-
university Ph.D. program in entrepreneurship.

In comparison, the Australian State of New South Wales version of SSE was to be “Sydney in
name only” representing a collaboration of all 11 NSW-based universities plus the state’s
vocational education system called TAFE. Also, each of these institutions is comprehensive
with existing offerings in entrepreneurship, many of which already had multidisciplinary
cohorts. So, there was a risk of SSE (in Sydney) creating further competition and redundancy
in NSW higher education.

3. OBJECTIVES
By July 2017, a decision was made that the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship’s inaugural
course was to be a topic related to entrepreneurship that was
1. Unique in comparison to anything on offer at any of the 12 HEIs, potentially even a
world-first offering
2. To be co-designed by two lead universities, supported by 2 more universities to enact
the espoused collaborative purpose of SSE
3. To support the launch of SSE by activating connections into the ecosystem, thereby
introducing SSE to the Australian startup ecosystem

At the time, research on entrepreneurial ecosystems was climbing dramatically, and each of
the educators maintained active connections with the ecosystem or were involved in studying
innovation systems of various forms. However, there were, as yet, no known courses for

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

anyone to learn about entrepreneurial ecosystems. So, a decision was made for the inaugural
course at SSE to be about navigating entrepreneurial ecosystems, named ‘The Navigator.”
As a by-product of the course design, it was envisioned that the educators would learn best
practices from each other, and that the course materials would effectively be made open
source to anyone else at the NSW HEIs who wanted to subsequently teach the same course.

4. RESPONSIBILITY
Following the announcement of SSE by the NSW government, the then Dean of the UTS
Business School called together the 4 business deans of UTS, UNSW, USyd, and MacQ for
an initial discussion on the establishment of SSE to ensure they agreed formally to cooperate
rather than compete in this context. The idea was that each HEI would propose a lead
academic from their institution for the inaugural yet to be titled unit of study. Collectively, a
‘dream team’ was assembled, including Richard Seymour from USyd, Lara from MacQ,
Martin from UNSW, and Jochen from UTS.

Closer to the launch date of SSE, Richard Seymour tragically passed away and efforts
focussed on two lead HEIs (then UTS and UNSW), supported by three academics from two
other HEIs (CSU and MacQ), several staff at SSE, and shepherded by the outgoing UTS
Dean of Business. The sheer number of academics and staff per student was incredibly high
for an undergraduate offering. The birth of “The Navigator” in July 2017 coincided with one
lead academic moving from UNSW to UTS. While this created a UTS-dominated team of lead
academics (albeit spread across two faculties), this was offset by expanding the supporting
faculty members to include another colleague from UNSW, totalling seven academics
including several learning and teaching award winners.

The role of the lead academics was to design the overall experience the students embarked
on, in a pedagogically rigorous and assessable manner, and to curate and create the core
content for a combined online and face-to-face delivery. Modules within the course were
coordinated to be co-designed or completely designed and delivered by the colleagues from
other HEIs as well as selected professionals. The choice of professionals, including panel
speakers, workshop facilitators and other guests was collaboratively decided on by the lead
academics and SSE staff.

IMPLEMENTATION
& FUNDING
5. STRATEGY & ACTIVITIES UNDERTAKEN
This case study covers four iterations of The Navigator; three delivered via SSE and one
within UTS. Due to the high-profile nature of SSE as a strategic initiative of the state
government and the need for The Navigator to contribute to that high profile in a short
timeframe, all emphasis of the inaugural version was on the quality of educational delivery
and ecosystem activation, at the expense of neglecting operational details.

After several operational consultations on how to design the back-end Learning Management
Systems (LMS) to be inter-operable with all other HEIs, SSE decided to host online content

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

with OpenLearning, a publicly available but customisable LMS used across many HEIs that
required minimal back-end infrastructure. After all, SSE had not yet even officially opened
their doors, had no educational accreditation of its own, and had no time to loose before
welcoming students to its campus.

Despite the functional ability to provide and evaluate assessments in OpenLearning, the
inaugural cohort of The Navigator was entirely co-curricular (which evolved to allow a for-
credit option), as each university’s administrative structure could not quickly accommodate to
the introduction of a new cross-institutional course. For the second cohort, the lead faculty at
UTS formally established a course code and assessment details by executive action, out of
rounds with the faculty board meetings in order to match the pace of SSE.

For the first cohort, students were recommended but not required to complete exercises.
Formal assessments were first introduced for the second cohort in early 2018, simultaneous
to expanding the teaching team by one more UTS member (from yet a third faculty) to
accommodate for marking, to a total of eight academics. In addition to noting that this number
is exceptionally high, it must also be noted that most of all academics were participating
above their usual workload at their home HEIs, and in many cases, were doing so without an
upfront promise of recompense. Those getting any recompense, were usually paid well below
conventional above-load teaching contracts. Such were the institutional pressures and
personal desired to participate in this new strategic instrument by the state government.

In terms of the course design, a fundamental ethos of SSE was that learning should be
experiential, flipped (or blended) and at the forefront of educational design. The high profile of
the SSE combined with the dedication of the academics involved to provide a world-class
educational experience resulted in doing more than would have been required to ‘get it over
the line.’ The course was designed such that students learned about entrepreneurial
ecosystems (EEs) by applying entrepreneurial methods to developing an ecosystem map as
their product. This involved a process of scaffolding the authenticity of the experience in an
immersive action learning scenario by
• learning conceptual basics about EEs,
• becoming exposed to an EE, picking an EE of/for which to create a map,
• engaging with stakeholders of their EE to improve the quality of the map and try and
sell the value of the map,
• moreover, developing a proposal to contribute to the development of the entire state’s
EE.

The course was structured as a blended learning experience, with most content being
provided in OpenLearning supported by two weekend-long face-to-face intensives. Key to
coordinating everyone’s contributions to the course was access to a master spreadsheet of
content and intensive planning, where content and modules could be co-developed or divided
and developed by smaller teams of academics. During the intensive, several panel
discussions were coordinated to invite the startup ecosystem into the classroom and to
introduce the guests to SSE. To make a bigger ‘splash,’ the inaugural version of The
Navigator involved several dozen guests across multiple panels. Another key feature was the
Massive Ecosystem Scavenger Hunt (aka MESH) that was inspired by the Startup Walkabout
Sydney in 2013, whereby students formed teams to solve clues that would lead them to travel
to a local incubator, accelerator, startup or other space and meet a (prepared) host there to
learn about that space. During the intensives, students were encouraged to meet all other

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

students. However, when it came to the group project, it was assumed that students would
form teams based on their university and would map out university-based ecosystems.

For the second version, students had more choice about what EE to focus on and how to
form teams. A substantial portion of the entrepreneurship content was cut out to increase the
emphasis on EEs. Panel discussions and guest talks were scheduled more selectively. The
content was edited to thread together each module, including foreshadowing. A major
achievement for the second version was to get course credit recognition established at UTS
and thus also via cross-institutional accreditation. Overall, ~1/3 of the students were for-credit,
another ~1/3 were unable to get credit, but wanted to do so, and ~1/3 took the course for co-
curricular experience only.

For the third version, the SSE course was re-structured as a 3-week intensive for a smaller
cohort of UTS-only students and only involved a subset of the UTS-academics who shared
the subject coordination and delivery. Instead of a walkabout, half the sessions were held in
incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces and labs around the city. Assessment design
was fine-tuned further. While there was less confusion than before about whether the
students were learning entrepreneurship or EEs, there was still some confusion about
whether students were ‘only producing a map’ over desktop work or actually engaging with
their EE and developing capabilities to do so.

For the fourth version, the experience from the previous versions were combined, with
reduced input from most academics. By now, the course was deliverable by any academic,
and the processes, design, and contacts were becoming well established enough for new
academics to join and replace the initial team of academics.

6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION


From the beginning, the quality of the course was assessed using course and teaching
evaluations. These occurred at the end of both intensives and were directly analogous to
formal mid-semester evaluations and final evaluations by students. For all SSE cohorts, these
were largely internal to SSE and only formal to the lead university via the few students
enrolled through it.

At the end of each intensive, participating academic would facilitate a collective reflection
session, whereby all students could nominate statements to complete “I like…” and “I wish…”
to gain feedback about what worked and where there was room for improvement,
respectively. Feedback received at the end of the first intensive was synthesised and
presented back to students towards the beginning of the second intensive, along with
comments about how the feedback had been incorporated.

7. SUSTAINABILITY MEASURES
For the long-term, each participating HEI and any of the other 12 NSW-based HEIs are
welcome to re-use the course design as they see fit. In that sense, the course design has
effectively become a public good. The course is now offered as an integral part of the
Diploma in Innovation at UTS (e.g., Binns, 2018), through which the course is also available
to all UTS students as an elective or as part of a submajor in Innovation & Entrepreneurship,
thereby guaranteeing its longevity as long as the Diploma continues to exist. The source
materials have also been shared with colleagues outside NSW, across Australia.

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

The sustainability of a SSE-based version of the course remains at risk until operational
compatibility with HEIs is sorted. It remains uneconomical for SSE to pay academic market-
rate for above-load teaching while claiming none of the tuition. Likewise, universities are
unlikely to agree to teaching at SSE being in-load if the majority of students and their tuition
are beyond their own HEI.

8. COSTS
The academic team can only guess at the internal costs to SSE to host The Navigator. Costs
involved their own staff costs, including events management, brand management, project
management, marketing and teaching materials (e.g., arts and crafts materials, printing, and
audio-visual). Adding to that were services that were outsourced, such as catering, security,
utilities, hosting (OpenLearning, Dropbox, etc.), as well as fees related to attracting panellists
or keynotes. In comparison, the costs to the academic team were quite minimal, well below
the cost of a full-time academic. In comparison, it is estimated that the academic team
invested several over 600 hours in the first version, approximately 400 hours in the second
version, and approximately 300 hours in the third SSE-hosted version. In comparison, the
UTS-based version used approximately 250 hours for course coordination, delivery and
assessment.

9. FUNDING
With AUD$25m in the bank, SSE was also not in a rush to crystallise their revenue and
expense model, and could afford to operate at a loss. For the SSE-hosted versions of The
Navigator, funding was provided by SSE, from the AUD$25m funding they received from the
state government, with minor additional funding coming from the lead institution to cover
shortfalls in teaching and marking costs, partially offset by incoming tuition from UTS students
and from non-UTS students enrolled via cross-institutional enrolment. For the UTS-run
version, all costs were embedded as part of the faculty operations for the Diploma in
Innovation.

OUTCOMES
& IMPACT
10. OUTCOMES
The launch and subsequent development of The Navigator had several outcomes and forms
of impact. First, and foremost, it resulted in a course design that can be adopted and adapted
by other member institutions of SSE and re-run at SSE, virtually regardless of the lead
academic(s).

Having the first two cohorts at SSE also enabled piloting the course design prior to it being
run as a UTS-only version as part of the new Diploma in Innovation. Exposure to the LMS
enabled academics to pursue using it at their own universities. Academics could learn from
each other’s expertise regarding subject matter as well as educational design. The latter is
particularly noteworthy since opportunities for peer-learning this aspect of being an academic
is rare. At best, academics can read the same literature about educational design, read each
other’s course outlines and attend the same teaching and learning forum. That, however, is a

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

far cry from collaboratively practicing education design and then collaborating on the online
and in-classroom delivery.

There was initially generous cooperation between academics from the four universities and
SSE in offering a non-credit version of The Navigator. However, over time the novelty of SSE
wore off and The Navigator evolved to include for-credit students via HEIs offering their own
course codes to retain tuition. Making The Navigator for-credit creates competition between
the universities, as does the development of four new courses at SSE, each of which already
exists in some shape or form in most of the 12 HEIs. This competitive aspect works against
SSE positioning itself as a complementary institution to the HEI and may emerge as a more
significant issue as SSE competes for state funding with other forms of early stage
entrepreneurship support.

11. IMPACTS
The Navigator had impact at several levels. With reference to its objectives, it

1. Introduced a course that was unique in comparison to anything on offer at any of the
12 HEIs, potentially even a world-first offering
2. Espoused a collaborative approach to course design, allowing participating academic
to learn educational design methods from each other and to leave behind ‘blue prints’
or source code for others to use. The same applies to industry guests, who became
more familiar with the course design and were able to be involved across cohorts.
3. Activated a broad cross section of the Australian startup ecosystem to welcome SSE
as a member of the ecosystem. Most notably, The Navigator attracted the interest of
internationally known entrepreneurs, including Jeff Bezos.

Additionally, The Navigator has provided a cross-institutional community of practice in


entrepreneurial education. Likewise, the successive student cohorts are forming an
impressive alumni group that is uniquely cross-institutional and actively networking, as also
witnessed in testimonials mentioned in SSE’s Annual Reports.

12. INVOLVED STAKEHOLDERS AND BENEFICIARIES


SSE and The Navigator operated with a very diverse mix of stakeholders and beneficiaries.
As a ‘school’ the primary beneficiaries were the students. Beyond them, others included SSE,
the startup ecosystem, the academics and their home HEIs.

Students
The students benefited in several ways. They learned about entrepreneurial ecosystems, by
engaging with online materials and exercises in the intensives, including by interacting with an
ecosystem of their choice. In particular the Massive Ecosystem Scavenger Hunt (MESH) was
well received by students for them to physically experience the environments, spaces,
programs and companies they were learning about. They also benefited by learning alongside
a ‘tribe’ of like-minded students across 12 HEIs, where everyone was welcome to share their
entrepreneurial passion; some students commented that they had otherwise felt like outliers
at their home HEI. As summarised by one alumni of the inaugural cohort: “My journey over
the past ten months has been nothing but inspiring, eye-opening and life-changing” (Ye,
2017)

SSE

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

SSE benefited in several ways. For their official house warming party, coinciding with the
second intensive of the inaugural cohort, they could showcase the space being used for its
stated purpose and in a way that shared many of the ecosystem infographics produced by the
students with the ecosystem so visually welcome them to be part of the ecosystem around
SSE. Since The Navigator activated many relationships with guests in the ecosystem, SSE
became known as a place to share perspectives for others to learn from and to inspire the
next generation of entrepreneurs, thereby increasing the social and reputational capital of
SSE. At the end of the inaugural cohort, SSE even received a letter from Jeff Bezoz,
providing the students some words of encouragement towards their entrepreneurial careers
(Castles, 2017).

Guests and the startup ecosystem(s)


Guests were predominantly from industry, but also included government officials, media and
other stakeholders from the startup ecosystem. Each of them gained from the chance to
express and discuss their views with the students and with each other. In some cases, the
guests were ‘ambushed’ by students after their talk or actively networked with other guests
who they might not otherwise have met, had they not been on the same panel.

Academics
Each of the academics involved gained in several ways. Co-developing a subject provided a
rare opportunity to trade and mix practices with other academics. While collaboration on
research is common, collaboration for teaching remains rare, despite there being an inherent
need for the whole of higher education to maintain or build high levels of professional and
scholarly teaching capabilities. Academics also gained in social and reputational capital
through their association with SSE and in interaction with the myriad of industry guests.
Connections to these guests could be leveraged for repeat guest appearances, participation
in research or other projects by the academic or other unanticipated outcomes. For most of
the HEIs, there was some prestige associated with being part of the strategic intervention.
While this prestige was often recognised at the level of the chancellery, operational support at
the level of deans or heads of schools was mixed, because there was little interoperability
with the academic’s ‘day job’.

One of the future challenges is keeping these and additional academics from across the HEIs
engaged. SSE has failed to develop equitable engagement with the academics involved in
developing and delivering The Navigator. There also remain discrepancies in whether
academics are treated as part of SSE’s broader community, or only as readily on-demand
teaching resources. For instance, some academics only ever get invited to come in and teach
for free on a weekend, and are not invited to other events or activities. This failure to cultivate
a diverse and engaged academic community is likely to remain a major weakness in the
longer term.

13. AWARDS / RECOGNITION


SSE’s evolution, kicked off by The Navigator, was recognised in October 2018, when SSE
won the award for The Most Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Centre at the Annual
Conference of the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres (GCEC).

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

LESSONS
LEARNED
14. PRIMARY CHALLENGES
A major challenge remains in enabling SSE to operate as a school, as opposed to only a
venue for co-curricular activities. As a non-accredited organisation in the crowded HEI space,
their intentions to foster collaboration in a highly competitive environment remains a cultural
as well as operational challenge. As most HEIs have their own full suite of offerings, there is
relatively little benefit to divert academic resources away from the HEI’s core operations and
towards ‘helping the competition.’ Hence the need, in the first instance, for academic working
with SSE and The Navigator to do so above their regular workload and with the (sometimes
reluctant) permission of their supervisors.

15. SUCCESS FACTORS


The success of The Navigator is seen in the increasing interest in the course by students,
particularly for-credit ones. Similarly, the growing interest of participating HEIs to offer their
own for-credit version of The Navigator speaks to its popularity, despite the potential to
cannibalise the SSE cohort.

The pace at which new course can be piloted at SSE is faster than in most HEIs, so there
remains an incentive to experiment with SSE while following formal channels within an HEI,
even if the coordination costs are higher and if the workload is not recognised within the HEI.

The success of SSE for their first year of operations is measured in terms of learning
opportunities for which SSE boasts “welcoming more than 4,000 participants, including
academic faculty, student entrepreneurs, startups and industry partners at more than 100
activities hosted at our Sydney campus and member campuses across the state” (Sydney
School of Entrepreneurship, 2018).

Strong government support will remain a determining factor for the longevity of the SSE and
its courses. The latest government has expressed much less appetite to support
entrepreneurship than the government that provided the AUD$25m for SSE or the AUD$35
for the Sydney Startup Hub. In a parliamentary inquiry for “Support for Start-ups in Regional
New South Wales” in mid-2018, SSE was not able to report having contributed to the creation
or growth of student startups or their success factors, only learning, placing further support for
them at risk.

16. TRANSFERABILITY
The case of The Navigator is of relevance to any academic interested in piloting new course
design with the SSE or similar non-accredited organisations, including incubators and
accelerators. The broader case of SSE is of interest to any entrepreneurship centre, hub,
incubator or accelerator that is beyond the walls of an HEI but maintains some association to
the HEI. A major lesson learned is that, when the music stops, the students or participants in
the program have to benefit, but also the partnering academics and HEIs, regardless of their
generosity.

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Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

FURTHER
INFORMATION
17. PUBLICATIONS / ARTICLES

Bliemel, M. (2014) “Lessons from an inside-out flip in entrepreneurship education” Small


Enterprise Research, 21(1), p. 117-128 (doi.org/10.1080/13215906.2014.11082080)
Bliemel, M. (2014) “Getting Entrepreneurship Education Out of the Classroom and Into
Students’ Heads” Entrepreneurship Research Journal, 4(2), p. 237-260 (doi.org/10.1515/erj-
2013-0053)
Kaye, N., Schweitzer, J., Bliemel, M., Miles, M. (2018) “The Sydney School of
Entrepreneurship: Building entrepreneurial capacity in NSW” Australian Centre for
Entrepreneurship Research Exchange, Brisbane, QLD http://acereconference.com/

18. LINKS

Berejiklian, G. (2016) “NSW Budget: $25 Million for New Sydney School of Entrepreneurship”
https://sse.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/200616-SSE-rel-Berejiklian-Roberts-Barilaro-
160620-NSW-Budget-25-million-for-new-Sydney-School-of-Entrepreneurship.pdf
Roberts, A. and Barilalo, J. (2016) “Nick Kaye Recruited for Sydney School Of
Entrepreneurship” https://sse.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/180716-SSE-CEO-
recruitment.pdf
Bliemel, M. (2018) “Should all students get a taste for entrepreneurship?”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-all-students-get-taste-entrepreneurship-martin-bliemel
Binns, P. (2018) “Navigating the world of an Entrepreneur”
https://www.uts.edu.au/about/faculty-transdisciplinary-innovation/news/navigating-world-
entrepreneur
Castles, A. (2017) “Why Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is sending messages of support to
Sydney uni students” StartupSmart https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news-
analysis/amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-is-sending-messages-of-support-to-sydney-uni-students/
Parliament of New South Wales (2018) “Support for Start-ups in Regional New South Wales”
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/inquiries/Pages/inquiry-details.aspx?pk=2443
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (2017) “Annual Report 2016-2017” https://sse.edu.au/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/SSE-Annual-Report-V1.1-lowres93.pdf
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (2018) “Annual Report 2017-2018” https://sse.edu.au/wp-
content/uploads/2018/11/SSE_Annual_Report_18.pdf
Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (2018) “Sydney School of Entrepreneurship wins global
industry award for excellence” https://sse.edu.au/sse-global-award-2/

UIIN GOOD PRACTICE SERIES


Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

Ye, E. (2017) “Mapping my way through The Navigator- The Inaugural Cohort at The Sydney
School of Entrepreneurship” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mapping-my-way-through-
navigator-inaugural-cohort-sydney-esmond-ye/

19. KEYWORDS
Entrepreneurship Education, Course co-development, Ecosystem activation, Multi-university
collaboration,

20. PUBLIC CONTACT DETAILS

University of Technology Sydney


Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation
Dr Martin Bliemel
1 Quay Street
Haymarket, NSW 2000
Australia

Phone: +61 (02) 9514 4119


E-mail: Martin.Bliemel@uts.edu.au
Web: www.uts.edu.au

UIIN GOOD PRACTICE SERIES


Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org
HERDING CATS TO CO-CREATE CROSS-UNIVERSITY COURSES IN RECORD TIME

UIIN GOOD PRACTICE SERIES


Case study written by Bliemel, M., Schweitzer, J., Mery Keitel, A., Green, R., Nicolas, L., Miles, M.,
Moroko, L., Groeger, L. and Griffith, S.
www.uiin.org

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