Innovation: The Instrument of the Entrepreneur

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity.”
Peter Drucker, Management Consultant, Educator, Author

This week many St Catherine’s students from both our Junior and Senior Schools, along with their mothers and grandmothers enjoyed our Mother & Daughter Breakfast in the lead up to Mother’s Day this Sunday. Guest Speaker at the event was St Catherine’s Alumnae and successful entrepreneur, Georgia Beattie (’04), CEO and Shareholder of Bulla Park, Australia’s largest organic mushroom farm.

During the breakfast event, Georgia shared memories of her time at St Catherine’s and provided the audience with insights into her entrepreneurial journey, even whilst at School, commenting that she always challenged the status quo, often finding her approach was different from other students around her. It was indeed her innate observations and continual drive for change that became her greatest strength in the commercial world.

Post-School, Georgia enrolled in the RMIT Entrepreneurship Program and was soon offered a scholarship to Babson College in Boston. During this experience, Georgia learnt to take an idea to market, from some of America’s most successful entrepreneurs.

During a music festival, where she experienced the limitation of being unable to purchase glassware to drink from, Georgia raised the venture capital to create the business Lupé, an fully recyclable single-serve, shatterproof wine glass. This product revolutionised how festival-goers purchase their drinks.

From here, Georgia moved to Bulla Park, where she has innovated and shifted the landscape in mushroom farming, creating clean food via environmentally clean agriculture practices. Bulla Park is now Australia’s largest organic mushroom farm, turning over 15 tonnes of mushrooms per week, with the goal to double in size each year through the use of high-performance farming technology to achieve fast growth and scale.

As Georgia described to our breakfast guests “the entrepreneurial journey is a choose your own adventure,” where you can “think differently, constantly.”

St Catherine’s Finance, Business and Entrepreneurship Elective in Year 9, supports our students to innovate and think boldly and creatively as they develop their own entrepreneurial adventures.

Innovation the Instrument of EntrepreneurshipThrough product and idea development based on pain points they experience in everyday life, our young entrepreneurs expand their creative thinking, collaborate with their peers, reflect and reset their own thinking to new and broader pathways, inquire deeply into the needs of consumers, all whilst sharpening their higher-order cognitive skills and metacognition.

As Drucker comments, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” Our Year 9 students discuss different innovations that have occurred over the past centuries. An example our Year 9 students understand is the change in the way we listen to, and play music, with the changes from the phonograph (1877), cassette player (1932), CD player (1980), MP3 Player, smartphone, and cloud service. This innovation has occurred over a century through the use of technology and adapting to the needs of consumers.

St Catherine’s Learning Framework focuses on providing every student with a strong foundation to reach their aspirations in learning and in life. The Finance Business and Entrepreneurship Elective offers our Year 9 students the opportunity to be bold and adopt a fearless mindset, develop the courage and confidence to take risks in learning, and strive to grow through the collaboration of ideas and enhanced development of their innovations.

I am excited about the opportunities and creations this year’s students will bring to the table and the future St Catherine’s entrepreneurs who will change the world we live in, just like Georgia Beattie.

Mrs Gina Peele

Deputy Principal - Student Programs

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