Creative Industries Innovation Centre
DDB Worldwide
46-52 Mountain Street
Ultimo, NSW
[check against delivery]
We have an all-star line-up of speakers to follow, so I will be brief.
Innovation is increasingly powered by collaboration.
Collaboration allows us to pool resources, experience and skills.
It breaks down barriers, speeds the circulation of knowledge, and inspires fresh thinking.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to announce the latest Enterprise Connect collaboration, in which the University of Technology, Sydney will host the Creative Industries Innovation Centre.
UTS does not enter this partnership alone, but as part of a consortium that unites higher education and industry across Australia.
The centre and the firms that use it will be able to draw on the expertise, resources and networks of consortium members.
For example, DDB Sydney, our hosts today, knows all about marketing and communications.
As a global company, DDB also knows what it takes to compete internationally.
The Creative Industries Innovation Centre will make this knowledge available to smaller firms through business reviews, tailored advisory services, publications, seminars and workshops.
This is how collaboration should work.
The centre will also draw on the resources of the broader Enterprise Connect network, with its twelve manufacturing and innovation centres Australia-wide.
Since it was established last year, Enterprise Connect has worked with hundreds of small and medium-sized firms – introducing them to new ideas and technologies that will make them more productive and competitive.
The Creative Industries Innovation Centre will provide core services similar to those offered across the network, as well as specialist services tailored to the creative industries.
While it is headquartered at UTS, the centre will serve firms around the country through a national network of business advisors, through the other Enterprise Connect centres, and through the network of partners UTS has brought together.
We all know how bleak the economic climate has become since the onset of the global recession.
Enterprise Connect is about helping SMEs keep the lights on in these dark times.
It represents a new approach to business improvement.
It is about building innovation capacity by linking firms, institutions and industries together.
It’s about transcending boundaries to engage everyone in the innovation system.
It’s about collaboration.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the Creative Industries Innovation Centre.
These industries are vitally important to our culture and our economy, but there is more to it than that.
As the Cutler review pointed out, if we are serious about innovation, “we need to call on the creative imagination and the distinctive skills associated with the liberal and creative arts” (p. 48).
This centre will help to build those skills.