The last few years have seen resurgence in interest in design as a driver of innovation and competitive advantage. GROUNDBREAKER is a collective of design thinkers, innovation champions, creative boffins, open-sourcers, systems magicians, and curiosity-buffs who are partaking in an 8-week intensive chemistry cooker to explore and build new tools for collaborative innovation through design. Interes
ted people are invited to participate. Good ideas have a chemistry of their own. Some percolate and bubble up via the accidental interactions of unsuspecting visionaries. Others are forged in the intensive pressure cooker of process-formulated labs. One philosophy we all share: innovation depends upon this chemistry. From June 27 - August 17, 2012, at the Object Gallery Surry Hills, GROUNDBREAKER is co-creating a series of hands-on workshops, debates and digital discussions to build the infectious energy and tools it takes to break into new ground in innovation. Together with a wide group of participants across the city, this network of enthusiasts will be putting Sydney on the map for its groundbreaking processes in innovation. Traditional innovation is undergoing a turn towards the collective. New tools of crowd-sourcing and open-sourcing must be enacted in the physical realm of design workshopping and push the boundaries of the collective. The GROUNDBREAKER closing Roundtable Symposium will take place on August 17, where the findings from the workshops over the 8 weeks will be showcased and discussed. GROUNDBREAKER is presented by the u.lab, a new lab for interdisciplinary innovation projects at the University of Technology, Sydney. At the u.lab we experiment with how innovation occurs as the product of opportunistic interactions. The projects u.lab are tackling at u.lab require radical cross-boundary thinking and embedded cooperation within complex systems of effect.
