UNSW Innovation Hub launches

This flagship initiative is part of UNSW’s new Progress for All Strategy.

The UNSW Innovation Hub is a problem-solving, project-based initiative that curates, convenes and facilitates project teams focused on creating meaningful societal impact at scale and at pace. It does this by providing the space and systems for UNSW students and staff to work together across powerful interdisciplinary teams. From 2025, the hub will also be working to develop a thriving innovation ecosystem across UNSW that strengthens and amplifies the University’s existing innovation work. 

Led by Dr Carly Vickers, the Innovation Hub team specialises in employing design-led processes and methodologies to support projects in all areas from problem definition and scoping, through ideation, prototyping, testing and implementation. Its mission is to design and establish new ways for universities to work with community, government and industry partners that foreground collective creativity and productivity to magnify our societal impact.

Way of working

Too often pressure is placed on individuals and teams to produce ‘innovative outcomes,’ without consideration for creating the conditions under which innovative thinking can thrive. The hub’s way of working is different. They believe that when you focus on designing the team and designing the process in response to a carefully defined problem space, that unique innovation naturally follows.

Designing the team

The Innovation Hub team works by curating and convening University-wide, diverse and inclusive interdisciplinary teams. These teams not only represent multiple fields of academic expertise coming together, but also diverse professional skill and lived experience. The team members are academic staff, professional staff and students working in collaborative ecosystems designed to break down unnecessary and unproductive hierarchies. 

The teams can expand, contract and change in response to the project needs at any given time. Operational processes that go hand in hand with project work can be scaffolded and facilitated, so that teams can concentrate on innovative interdisciplinary thinking. 

Designing the process

Interdisciplinary thinking sparks unique outcomes, especially when driven by design-led methodologies. In the Innovation Hub the teams are coached through a design-led process using design methods for problem definition, research, ideation, rapid prototyping, testing and implementation. The development of a project is never linear, and so the project process is designed and redesigned with teams in iterative cycles until a solution emerges. 

Due to the size and pace of large institutions, many incredible innovations aren’t translated into real-world impact. The Innovation Hub’s methods are designed with project agility and implementation as the ultimate goal. 

Knowing that it works

This approach works because it has been designed, tested and implemented within the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture for the last four years. Since 2021 the Innovation Hub has engaged over 400 students, staff and external partners in diverse and inclusive project teams that tackled and implemented solutions for a wide range of real-world problems. 

Professor Claire Annesley, Dean, UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture says, “The Innovation Hub has developed skills and embedded a culture of collaborative problem solving in ADA that endures way beyond the boundaries of a project.” 

“Students and staff consistently share stories of how they have successfully deployed the skills they have learnt in the Innovation Hub into their everyday. Which is of course the dream outcome.” 

You can read more about our projects, partners, and alumni on our website. 

Ready to get started

To coincide with the foundational year of Progress For All, the Innovation Hub will support five existing UNSW project teams with project coaching. The hub’s staff bring expertise in design strategy and methods, project management, administrative practices, visual design, communications and marketing. They are uniquely equipped to coach and support project teams to achieve meaningful, real-world outcomes while working within the systems and structures of a large university. 

If you have a team grappling with a complex problem and would like support, the Innovation Hub team are keen to hear from you. 

You can find more information and the EOI call-out on the Innovation Hub SharePoint or email innovationhub@unsw.edu.au.

Watch the UNSW Innovation Hub video to learn more about this initiative.