Achieving Innovation and Science Australia's vision represents a grand challenge for Australia. New approaches are required within our innovation ecosystem, including in the way universities address science translation and commercialisation.
Engaged innovation scholarship refers to the systematic mobilisation and production of knowledge about innovation by Business School and other social science scholars who are embedded alongside natural science, engineering and biomedical researchers as members of multidisciplinary teams.
While studying innovation "in the making" to produce and publish new knowledge, embedded researchers also assess and mobilise existing knowledge to position the team advantageously for capitalising on opportunities for innovation, commercialisation and entrepreneurship.
The Engaged Innovation Scholarship team aims to complement and leverage the University of Sydney's formidable research strengths by fostering new capabilities in commercialisation.
We are implementing an innovative approach to Australia's science commercialisation challenge through close collaboration with colleagues across faculty boundaries. Innovation challenges do not respect disciplinary boundaries and cannot be adequately tackled with knowledge from just one part of the University.
Collectively we have earned over $25 million in research funding with co-investigators, as well as numerous awards. We publish regularly in leading business and multidisciplinary journals such as:
The scholarly aim of this research is to develop a process model of academic entrepreneurship that incorporates and integrates recent theorising about innovation ecosystems, giving attention to the distinct roles of, and relationships among, ecosystem actors.
The practical aim of this research is to solicit the perspectives of diverse types of actors or stakeholders with experience and interest in identifying how to go about improving the performance of the local innovation ecosystem.
As part of the inaugural Sydney Nano 'Catalyst' project, we are working with science, engineering and biomedical researchers involved in processes of developing and/or commercialising new technologies or inventions, closely following their commercialisation pursuits.
In addition to documenting the commercialisation of new technologies, we aim to mobilise scholarly knowledge about innovation and commercialisation to support inventors to achieve their commercialisation goals.
A collaboration with McGill University, the $9 million EcoToxChip project is developing, testing, validating, and commercialising quantitative PCR arrays and a data evaluation tool for the characterisation, prioritisation, and management of environmental chemicals and complex mixtures of regulatory concern.
Professor Steven Maguire is one of two social scientists among the project’s eight principal investigators, and he is spearheading GE3LS research (Genomics and its Ethical, Environmental, Economic, Legal and Social Aspects) on innovation and institutional entrepreneurship.
More events will be scheduled soon.
Professor Steven Maguire presented "Integrating Social Sciences with Nanosciences for a Sustainable Future" at the international workshop on Nanotechnology for a Sustainable Future organised by the University of Waterloo, Canada.
