“Quicklook” Assessment of Greater Adelaide's Assets & Challenges ...

• The Inner West Business Enterprise Centre is located within the Digital Precinct.
It provides advice for small businesses to assist with start up businesses and general
business advice and networking opportunities.
• The Digital Precinct Authority was established as a subsidiary of Council to assist
with property development, partnerships between business and the coordination of
initiatives.
• The new library for the Digital Precinct will be the IT flagship for the Charles Sturt
Council’s library service. This nontraditional library will have a strong business focus
using modern information technology resources.
Physical Infrastructure and Resources
• Thebarton uses its natural environment to its benefit marketing itself, taking the
established buildings and modifying them to provide an attractive and functional
facility.
• Thebarton seems to have a well-defined market and their product is tailored to
suit this market, i.e. small, cozy, ‘cool’ surroundings with a variety of spaces to meet
many niches.
• Interestingly, Thebarton has been self-funded since its inception.
• The Charles Sturt Council utilized vacant buildings and a substantial landholding
in the Hindmarsh area to develop the Digital Precinct.
• Currently there are over 25 businesses located in the Digital Precinct, many in
buildings that the Council has refurbished and converted to tenancies.
• The Technology School of the Future (TSOF) is an ideal anchor faculty for the
Digital Precinct. TSOF is South Australia’s (SA) major center for teacher development
in learning technologies and is a unique facility when compared internationally. It is
part of the Education Development Centre.
Barriers/Obstacles
• Many of the start-up companies at Thebarton are life style oriented. There is no
reason why a business cannot have this type of growth goal, but in terms of the larger
economic development picture, it is somewhat limiting.
• A major barrier to expanding the BIG Program is not just lack of funds for
promotion or support of successful candidates but rather, gaining enough potential
applicants of a standard to warrant expanding the numbers.
• The primary barrier for the PES Program will be whether the Premier's
Department and the University wish to continue the Premier's Enterprise Scholarship
beyond 2002. The original commitment was only for three years.
• New small companies in both precincts have limited access to networking
opportunities in larger markets (such as US trade shows).
• These companies also find it hard to acquire the early stage funding needed to
start building their businesses. Even government grants are problematic and can
require large amounts of documentation.
• Insufficient accommodation within the Digital Precinct to handle business growth
• Businesses within the Digital Precinct are still working isolated from each other
Quotes
Notable quotes included:
• ‘We must continue to work on developing the culture among young graduates of
seeing self-employment as a career path and a risk worth taking.’
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