“So my second MBA project with Ducere and University of Canberra has been to work with industry partner, PWC. There are global company, PWC, one of the top 4 firms in Australia. “ - Zeah Behrend
“We’ve been tasked with looking at innovation ecosystems and internationally, and trying to take the learnings from what makes those innovation ecosystems, like Silicon Valley or Israel, work. And then looking at ways in which PWC can facilitate or enable similar development in Australia.” - Ben Small
“So what they are trying to do is stimulate innovation and find the next self, like opportunities to create a strong economy for Australia” - Steven Moran
“The second part of the project was to come up with recommendations for PWC to implement. To look at how they could support the development of innovation ecosystems in Australia and we present it to PWC last Friday.” - Zeah Behrend
“We were able to deliver, not only to our sponsor directly but also a number of senior managers from PWC and Melbourne who have significant interest in this project since it’s been on the way” – Ben Small
“We went through each recommendation, talked through the justification on what sat behind it and how we saw those recommendations playing out in terms of practicalities. We matched them on a reward and risk matrix, so thinking about PWC, what’s the reward going to be for a particular recommendation and then what’s the risk or the imports that they’ll need to put into that. As we were presenting, you can see people’s heads nodding, you could see Marcus was interrupting to ask questions, he head some suggestions about how we could blend recommendations together” - Zeah Behrend
“Combining those two recommendations, you can almost create synergy, so one plus one equals three, you could see that sort of happening live, you could see his eyes lighting up, Marcus Tierney” –Steven Moran
“My brain is just processing 12 recommendations and I can sort of see opportunity immediately for a few and shaping it around, but for me it’s great, so thought provoking, how am I going to use this? Where’s the best spot for this firm? How are we going to implement this recommendations? There was nothing --- you are never going to do that. It’s like, I’m gonna shape this then I’m going to make that happen.” - Marcus Tierney
“I’m excited to see that level of engagement, that it wasn’t just ‘oh, this recommendations are interesting’. It was the next step so how could we sell this within PWC? What would this look like if we implemented it?” - Zeah Behrend
" You’re taking academic concepts, applying them to real life situations, which will result in real life outcomes. Which will then impact the broader economy, which is something that’s a bit different than a lot of MBAs in a sense that this academic pieces which are marked, and left unassessed.” –Steven Moran