For industry
About the Innovation Practice Program
The Innovation Practice Program comprises three streams:
Access fresh ideas
Through the Innovation Practice Program's Spark stream, organisations partner with Masters students from Engineering, Biomedicine, Architecture, Business and IT. You'll select a mentor from your organisation to work with a dedicated student team. Under their leadership, the team will develop innovative solutions to a real-life challenge facing your organisation.
Develop your future leaders
The mentor from your organisation will learn about innovation alongside the students. They will also be trained in the coaching-style leadership that has proven successful in generating innovative solutions. Mentors can choose to formalise this learning through a Professional Certificate in Innovation Practice, the credits for which can articulate towards an MBA or a Master of Enterprise.
Validate your opportunities
Ignite takes innovation concepts conceived on campus (including student innovation projects) and further develops them through prototyping, testing, and validating innovation hypotheses in the IPP's Opportunity Lab (O-Lab). Teams of student interns work with organisations over 3–6 months, supported by O-Lab mentors. O-Lab is based at Melbourne Connect and teams have access to all facilities including the Telstra Creator Space.
The benefits to your organisation
- The potential to develop innovative solutions to real-life challenges, with minimal investment or risk to your organisation
- Access to fresh data, insights and ideas about current challenges your organisation is facing
- Innovation and leadership development for your mentor, which they can practise in a unique ‘ok to fail’ setting
- Gain access to potential employees with no commitment
- Kick-off a deeper relationship with the university
How it works
- Step 1
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Get in touch – we’ll work with you to identify and define the innovation challenge
- Step 2
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Choose a project mentor and sponsor from your organisation
- Step 3
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Over 12 weeks, a team of 4–6 students will work on your challenge
- Step 4
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The project mentor simultaneously learns about and applies leadership theories and tools in practice
- Step 5
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You receive a report that outlines the student team's proposal, developed specifically for your organisation.
Your commitment
The costs
There is no charge to participate in the program.
However, organisations can choose to fund your mentor to complete the Professional Certificate in Innovation Practice.
The roles
Participating organisations commit both a project mentor and a project sponsor to play important roles in the program.
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- This is the person who is ‘on the ground’, supporting the team and participating in the leadership program
- The time commitment from the project mentor is about 8 – 12 hours per week
- Find out more about the project mentor role.
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- The project sponsor is usually someone who is a bit more senior in the organisation. This person acts as the project owner and mentors the mentor throughout the program
- The time commitment from the project sponsor is about 12 hours spread out over 12 weeks
- Find out more about the project sponsor role.
Hear from Kate Cousins, Lead Technical Specialist Engineer at GM Holden, on her experience as IPP mentor.
Building a multi-faceted, evolving relationship
From industry-sponsored innovation projects to leadership training, research collaborations, and tailor-made short courses, IPP provides organisations of all sizes and sectors with a pathway to build a dynamic, mutually beneficial relationship with the University of Melbourne—one that evolves uniquely for each partner.
Hear from Daniel Petrovski—IPP alumnus, student mentor, and industry partner—on how his journey with IPP has unfolded, supporting his growth as a professional and entrepreneur.
Register your interest
Would you like to start a conversation about getting involved? Register your interest and someone from our team will be in touch.