Canberra businesses to benefit from innovative partnership between industry and academics

A collaboration between industry and academics may soon prove fruitful for Canberra SMEs who want better and easier access to projects and business.

Industry Capability Network (ICN) ACT has partnered with the University of Canberra (UC) to streamline the onboarding process for new members on Gateway, ICN’s link between businesses and the projects they’re primed to work on.

The collaboration saw ICN sponsoring two interns from Innovation Central Canberra (ICC) – a UC partnership with tech leaders CISCO – to create a proof of concept that uses AI to automate Gateway’s company verification processes.

“It is a privilege to engage with the next generation of innovators and leaders,” ICN ACT Business Manager Louise Wakefield said.

“ICN ACT sees great potential in partnering with our students and the ICC team, not only for developing solutions in our organisation but also as another way to support SMEs in our region.”

The interns worked closely with ICN’s in-house teams to gather and analyse user data and design a sophisticated solution. Per the ICC model, the interns also had access to CISCO’s technology experts for guidance and mentorship throughout the real-world experience.

In this, ICC Director Erin Stacey said the arrangement was mutually beneficial and was an excellent case study of the efficacy of the ICC model.

“When UC entered this partnership with CISCO, we set out to provide industry and businesses here in Canberra with access to researchers and innovators. The idea is that it provides skill and talent development for UC students but also grants the businesses that partner with us access to state-of-art technology and expert researchers to address the different challenges they might have,” she said.

“The partnership with ICN has been a great success. They’re not a tech organisation, but they can see the value of digital automation and accelerating an idea through the use of digital technology to benefit local businesses.

“The value alignment between ICN and ICC, which focuses on the impact for the Canberra community, is why we work well together.”

ICN has since employed one of the interns, Gemma Wu.

“Gemma and her fellow intern on the project, Hung, were able to automate and streamline what was a very manual process and they had great support from the ICN team,” Erin says.

“This provided invaluable experience for the students and, as it turns out, a fantastic opportunity for Gemma.

“In return, ICN had guarantees that the project scope could be delivered, knowing our interns were supported by experienced specialists from CISCO.”

The success of the project has resulted in ICN coming on board as one of ICC’s strategic partners, and discussions have commenced on future projects to engage UC students in digital work experience to further benefit the 90,000 Australian businesses registered on ICN’s database.

Records show ICN has helped secure over $50 billion worth of business for local companies across more than 75,000 contracts, though the actual numbers are expected to be much higher.

Erin said there were “many valuable opportunities” for the use of AI to analyse data, probe efficiency and, ultimately, continue to improve services for businesses looking to get in on the action.

“I think there’s a lot of concern about the risks around using AI, but it’s here, so the point of the innovation centre is to ask the questions, ‘How do we utilise it to better our lives?’ What’s possible? How do we do it?'” she said.

“The results could be hugely beneficial to ICN’s members. By automating its manual processes, ICN has more time to focus on what they do best – people-to-people, business-to-project connection.”

For more information, contact ICN or Innovation Central Canberra.