U.lab is an interdisciplinary framework for innovation projects at UTS. It creates opportunities for design-led innovation where learning, research and industry engagement are infused. We believe that Innovation occurs between people, not in isolation, and how we innovate is the product of opportunistic interactions.
We seek to expand the capacity of design-thinking into a truly interdisciplinary collaboration between entrepreneurial activity, corporate R&D and academic thought leadership. The projects we are tackling at u.lab require radical cross-boundary thinking and embedded cooperation within complex systems of effect. Our backgrounds are in Business, Engineering, Architecture, Design and IT and at u.lab we contribute and expand our cross-disciplinary knowledge and expertise.
Currently u.lab hosts five programs:
- The Entrepreneurship Lab is a full semester interdisciplinary design thinking course within which students leverage their own discipline knowledge and work in mixed teams to apply skills of ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘Creative Enterprise’ and develop solutions for the real world.
- Creative Minds are a 2-4 day series of workshops to tackle pressing real world innovation challenges. In a small group of students, professionals and academics the creative journey is facilitated using integrative and design thinking.
- BikeTank is a intensive workshop where we play with new design thinking methods for cities. Each BikeTank is an intensive exploration into a defined topic hosted by emerging design entrepreneurs and leading thinkers, contributing to a bigger picture project.
- CitySwitch is an international exchange between Japan, China, Indonesia and Australia, where urban designers, architects, design thinker and artists collaborate over five intense days, to collaborate on the creative activation of urban spaces.
- GroundBreaker is an 8-week innovation research program where we explore and build new tools for open innovation, collaborative innovation and crowd-share innovation.
