Innovation & entrepreneurship – the incredible way to sustainable development

On 25th May 2018, University of South Australia has invited all students, developers, hackers and other creative minds to unleash their entrepreneurial potential in SPACE. I was in the launching program of this competition “ActInSpace”; this International Space Hackathon is a global space technology competition encouraging students from engineering, business faculty, and anyone enthusiasts to join to work on real-life challenges using available space technology platforms and data. Participants will work together 24 hours in teams of 2-5, alongside business mentors and technical experts to design, improve or develop innovative applications to support the space industry. The best ideas will get the opportunity to create as start-ups and accelerate space jobs market.

Here most of the universities have studies on entrepreneurship which they implement to develop start-up enterprises and explore new markets with innovative ideas. They are working together with government and private sectors to solve environmental problems, provide better IT solutions to uses the government data, social issues, introduce new products to reduces cost and time, develop apps for secure and available services in all areas from mine industry to an everyday small problem.

Students from primary schools are getting opportunities of learning the entrepreneurial skills to start their projects and future start-ups. There are many ways to get funds for their proposals such as compete the competitions and win, attend different community activities to build a team and work together to solve problems and raises awareness with incredible ideas. They also can work in a group to develop ideas and proposal collaboratively with engineering, business, social works and all area of students with the help of experts in relevant fields. Mainly, kids are learning from schools how to work out how to resolve the real-life problems in a better way. Interestingly, in the ‘ActInSpace’ competition, the youngest competitor is an eight years old kid, last year who won a prize in the NASA Space Apps Challenge at the university as the youngest team leader among university students and aerospace engineers.

I studied my Bachelor of Business Administration from Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), the country’s one of the specialized technology university. There, graduate students get excellent opportunities to learn technology, innovation, environment, social development and entrepreneurial skills with the combination of engineering, life science, management and social science faculties. Because of graduated from such a university and after working many years on entrepreneurs development, I understand, entrepreneurial skills are essential to marketize the ideas. In Adelaide, I found a community organization STEMSEL Inventors CLUB, where school students learn to build their project using easy to program microcontrollers alongside business mentors and technical experts. The university business and engineering students do the internship here get hands-on experience and make fun of learning STEM education and Social Enterprise skills for school students. It’s a great way to exchange knowledge and work in a team to create innovative projects and ideas for start-ups.

Entrepreneurship creates new markets and jobs which is very important for the economic growth, human development, and prosperity. In recent technological advancement, fast-changing economy and climate change need innovative ideas to build start-ups for solving the issues. Green entrepreneurship is an incredible idea to address environmental degradation and create many more green jobs in rural and urban areas countries like us. We have to prepare our-self for the future global change as a skilled workforce with leadership qualities to build our sustainable economic growth. Quality education, innovation, and entrepreneurial skills will help to find the way for sustainable development.

Naiyer Fatema is a financial inclusion specialist and women economic empowerment activist. She experienced working with the financial organizations in Bangladesh and designed some financial products for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs (SME). She is a business graduate and a Masters in Development Studies (MDS). Currently, she facilitates programs in Digital Spaces in Adelaide to support communities taking the advantage of emerging technologies and new opportunities. Naiyer is an International Exchange Alumni of the U.S. government-sponsored exchange programs and a member of the Development Network, New Zealand.
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