With collaboration, crowd-sourcing and design showing their potential for problem solving for business, getting started is often the most difficult step.

A new format of design-led innovation is being run by the u.lab from the University of Technology, Sydney in conjunction with Object Gallery in Surry Hills.

GROUNDBREAKER aims to show local organisations how to benefit from design thinking applications through a series of public and private workshops, from 27 June to 17 August 2012.

“Innovation is taking a turn towards the collective. Good ideas have a chemistry of their own,” said Dr Joanne Jakovich, Senior Lecturer at the UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, who together with Dr Jochen Schweitzer, Senior Lecturer in Strategy at the UTS Business School, curates the 8 week program.

“We propose that crowd-share innovation methods, or tools of collaboration that push the boundaries of the collective, are the means by which problems of the future can be solved,” said Schweitzer.

According to Schweitzer, a number of recent studies have indicated that design-driven companies are more innovative, and therefore more successful, than others.  While this can be observed mainly in the US and Europe, Australian businesses have to catch up when it comes to practicing design-driven innovation.

Moreover, recent global economic pressures highlight the increasing importance of innovation and creativity for Australia, and the increasing need for approaches that complement the established research and development-based scientific and technological drivers of innovation.

Reflecting this, GROUNDBREAKER aims to show local companies how to use collaboration and crowd sourcing to innovate for better business outcomes.

The series of workshops, debates and digital discussions taking place from 27 June to 17 August in Object Gallery, Surry Hills, will highlight the importance of design creativity in innovation, disseminate best practices, and stimulate the development of new tools and methods. 

“By engaging with diverse catalysts who inject new thinking and techniques into your issues or challenges, your organisation will take new ideas and begin to develop them through the focused application of new techniques in design thinking and crowd-source innovation,” said Dr Schweitzer.

Over the two-month period, participants and UTS researchers will participate in ten workshops and numerous public events to collectively create a cloud of new knowledge. Interaction in the workshops is open to all.  For more information, visit http://groundbreaker.org.au

GROUNDBREAKER is an initiative of u.lab, an interdisciplinary framework for innovation projects at UTS, drawing on academic expertise from Business, Engineering, Built Environment, Architecture, Design and IT.