UTS Business School launches MBA for entrepreneurs

The launch by UTS Business School of an MBA specifically for entrepreneurs is a sign of how much Australia's entrepreneurial ecosystem has developed in the past 10 years, says Hamish Hawthorn, chief executive of Australia's leading incubator, ATP Innovations.

We've come a "huge way" over the past decade, Hawthorn told the launch of the UTS Business School MBA entrepreneurship (MBAe) – Australia's first MBA expressly designed for entrepreneurs seeking to fill gaps in their business skills.

"Ten years ago the opportunities for entrepreneur-focused education were very limited," Hawthorn said. "It's astonishing that you can now do an MBA that focuses just on what you need to learn, the tools you need, as an entrepreneur."

The MBAe, beginning in 2016, comprises three graduate certificates covering specific skills in areas such as corporate structures, intellectual property, commercialisation and new venture funding.

MBAe candidates will be invited to bring a business idea to develop, test and launch under the guidance of academic experts and industry mentors, local and international. They will also be connected with a "curated" network of incubators and accelerators.

"This is a very different approach," says UTS Business School's Associate Dean, Business Practice and External Engagement, Associate Professor James Hutchin. "A conventional business education program is about skills acquisition, teaching you how to do something," he says. "But when you talk about entrepreneurial education, it's about teaching you how tobe something. It's about creating the conditions that allow entrepreneurship to emerge, while giving people the skills they need."

Hawthorn was part of a panel for the MBAe launch that also included DesignCrowd co-founder Alec Lynch, venture capitalist Mark Bonnar, WINK Models founder Taryn Williams and serial "intrapreneur" Dr Virginia Wheway.

The panellists took part in the first of what will be an ongoing series of Startup Stories and were asked what one thing they would improve to make the entrepreneurial ecosystem more sustainable.

Lynch of DesignCrowd, a UTS alumnus and university medallist, said that when he was a young entrepreneur, starting a business and raising capital, "to have had access to the practical experience and education which UTS is known for would have been really valuable".

Bonnar, of Southern Cross Venture Partners, sees an "opportunity gap" between the significant national investment in R&D and the low volume of venture capital (VC) deployed into commercialising ideas.

"If you take patent filings as a proxy for innovation, as one measure of innovation, historically Australia is on a par with Israel, the US and Canada … if you overlay that graph with the amount of VC money being invested we're on a par with Belgium. So clearly access to capital, once you've found the risk you want to take, is still challenging."

Williams of WINK Models, said the thing that meant the most to her when she became an entrepreneur at age 21 was access to mentors who could help her navigate the "cluttered" ecosystem.

"As a woman I'm particularly interested in how we can do this for female entrepreneurs," she said, and she hoped a program like the MBAe will help. At last count only one in five businesses were being founded by women. "That's a number we really need to change."

Finally, Wheway, an executive with experience across industries including aviation, manufacturing, medical research and finance, said it was possible to be an entrepreneur inside an organisation, with the right mindset and support.

"Within an organisation you can still get to do some fantastic things," she said, but only if the organisation realised that "no matter how many processes you put around things not everything is going to succeed and it has the cultural readiness to accept that".

The UTS Business School one-year intensive MBAe begins in 2016. Three graduate certificates will be on offer and can be taken separately or combined for the MBAe degree. The graduate certificates are in commercialisation, entrepreneurship and new venture funding.

The MBAe program will be based in the Frank Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing Building in Ultimo, which is the heart of Australia's startup capital, Sydney. The Ultimo postcode has the highest density of startups in Australia.

For more information, visit MBAe.uts.edu.au.