See the future. Be the future.

It’s often said that the careers of tomorrow don’t even exist today.

It’s a truism that is played out every day in society.

We are continually being amazed to see people doing completely new types of work in completely new fields of commercial and community enterprise.

So how do you prepare the university students of today for the undefined careers of the future? What subjects should they select? How do we shape our curriculums?

The secret is not what subjects you teach.

It’s how you create ideas that generate enterprise and solve problems that will prepare you for the jobs of the future.

In short, it’s about innovative, entrepreneurial thinking that underpins both successful business ventures and rewarding careers in the jobs of the future.

A cornerstone of our programme is providing the entrepreneurial skills that enable you to be a successful leader, shaping and influencing the world around you.

Students can choose to include innovation and enterprise topics as electives within their current degrees. Students can also study a Bachelor of Business (Innovation and Enterprise, the Bachelor of Design and Technology Innovation or add an additional year of study to their existing degree with a Bachelor of Letters (Innovation and Enterprise).

The innovation and enterprise topics were created through an Australia-first partnership between Flinders University’s New Venture Institute and the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia, a US top ten business school for entrepreneurship.*

While not every student will become an entrepreneur in a new field, every student can benefit from learning to look at opportunities and obstacles in a lateral way. They learn just how valuable it is to dare to fail and learn skills to advance an idea in a safe and supportive environment.

“The jobs of the future can start today, even if you’re a university student,” says leading Australian expert in entrepreneurship, and head of entrepreneurial programs at NVI Flinders, Bert Verhoeven.

“Jobs for the future require students to develop an innovative, pro-active mindset and not be afraid to take initiative and create new solutions to difficult problems,” says Mr Verhoeven, who has built a career assisting new business start-ups to meet a market niche with an innovative idea.

He believes entrepreneurship and creativity will be key factors in new industries and job creation.

“Innovation is not about following rules. It is about change and breaking rules, the rules of the current status quo.

“In order to change and create true progress, we need to push the boundaries and understand that, if our experiments do not fail, we have played it safe, have not tried hard enough.”

Flinders Director of the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, Professor John Spoehr says many jobs flowing from impacts of technological change will involve problem solving, creativity, and design.

“There is considerable variation in the expected impact of automation on occupations, with creative occupations half as likely to be considered vulnerable to automation,” he says.

Around 24% of the creative occupation workforce are considered vulnerable to automation – whereas 54% of those in all other occupations are considered vulnerable, as highlighted in Creative Solutions, a report released in March 2017 by the Australian Industrials Transformation Institute at Flinders University.

Creative occupations include the thought and knowledge leaders in software development and interactive content, music and performing arts, film, television, radio advertising, marketing, design and visual arts and writing, publishing and print media.

At Flinders University we prepare students for the future, leveraging the insights of thought leaders, creating a curriculum that enables students to create their own future and positively influence how we live, work and learn in the 21^st century.

*The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine.