QUT Design Lab DCI student Samantha Kies-Ryan recently took part in The Innovation Lab programme in Sydney, run by Commonwealth Bank and funded by DFAT through Scope Global : http://www.scopeglobal.com/innovationlabs/. The program is designed to take participants through the six steps to realising an idea through to a business model and prototype. The main purpose of the lab is to help make the leap from idea to something that can be put into action. Samantha is excited about the possibility of taking what she has learned back to the the Soloman Islands as part of her research.
The workshop has taught Samanatha a number of tools and skills such as the business model canvas, as well as developing and iterating a prototype that she hopes to use in her research. From here she will be going to Vanuatu to check out other creative social enterprises Wan Smolbag and Further Arts, and then onto Solomon Islands to do some preliminary scoping for her research project.