Position of Power

AUTHOR: Chris Sheedy   DATE: 06.09.07   ISSUE 1, 2007

It is the first Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship to be established in Australia.

The Australian School of Business, a powerhouse merger of the Australian Graduate School of Management and the UNSW Faculty of Commerce and Economics, just gained more prominence. The School now has a bolder vision, a broader outlook offering more opportunities for stakeholders, and the added power of a combined academic workforce under one roof in a new, high-tech building.

The gift will allow us to recruit an internationally recognised academic who will boost our research and teaching capabilities.

Photo: Michael Crouch

The Chair will be within the newly established School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and will also have close links with the School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The position will be known as the Michael Crouch Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, in honour of Michael Crouch, Executive Chairman of Zip Industries (Aust) Pty Ltd, a well known and highly regarded Australian company with manufacturing and marketing facilities in Australia and the UK.

Michael Crouch said that he and his Company were very proud to be associated with the establishment of the Chair. “Innovation in all respects is the keynote to the future. It is very much an Australian characteristic. To have its importance and ramifications encompassed within the Australian School of Business is a very positive step forward for the future,” he said.

Jane Westbrook, Director Alumni and Community Partnerships at the Australian School of Business, who played a prime role in the establishment of a Capital Appeal for the Australian School of Business some eighteen months ago, said not only was the Appeal being well supported by the Alumni but added that the establishment of the Chair was a significant outcome of the Appeal, to which it is hoped that all Alumni would subscribe.

“The Australian School of Business”, added Ms Westbrook, “will now be able to recruit a leading academic in a new area of research for the School, which also sends very powerful messages about our capacity to attract that kind of support.”

"Michael Crouch has been a member of our Advisory Board since its inception. He's an extraordinarily capable man – he is a member of the APEC Business Advisory Council, for example – and his interest in innovation and entrepreneurship grew from his personal experience of building his own, highly-successful international company."

The Head of the School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Associate Professor Peter Murmann, says the Chair makes the Australian School of Business even more attractive to leading academics in what is already a highly competitive market. And when it comes to such a prestigious position, Associate Professor Murmann says it's important to get the recruitment process exactly right.

The new position will give the Australian School of Business an enormous boost to its teaching and research capabilities in innovation and entrepreneurship and its ability to offer such courses at undergraduate and graduate level. It will allow the School, Associate Professor Murmann says, to become even more competitive.

"To compete on a global basis, to remain as one of the internationally-ranked schools, we need to have the support of the business community, which helps us to resource the School in a way that makes it internationally competitive," he says.

"This new, high-profile position is immensely valuable. It will further increase our world-class research and educational capabilities, and that can only be good for students and for business."