Encouraging entrepreneurship and assisting start-ups to commercialise their ideas is behind the opening of Launceston’s Innovation Hub.

Called Enterprize – Tasmania’s Start-up Space, the hub will initially open in a pop-up space on Paterson Street before it moves to its permanent location at Macquarie House.

As with Hobart hub, which opened last week, the centre in Launceston has a focus on developing the local start-up community, providing the resources and support required to inspire and accelerate a generation of students, innovators and entrepreneurs.

The hubs are part of the Tasmanian Government’s efforts to position Tasmania at the forefront of the IT and innovation sector within Australia.

Enterprize Launceston will bring people together, provide a location, training and hands-on mentoring to develop, evaluate and implement, pre-start-up and early stage business opportunities.
It will enable us to tap into the many hundreds of ideas from all segments of the community: including over 50,000 students, develop and test them.

Anchor tenants and industry mentors, made up from educational establishments and the wider corporate community, will provide support and positive business role models.

Assisted by the Office of the Coordinator-General, we have also secured the support of leading International companies such as Amazon Web Services and Google who will be providing Tasmanian start-ups with access to a suite of free products, services and training along with access to their international community to give our most innovative projects their greatest chance to succeed.

The initial hub in Launceston will be located at 22-24 Paterson Street, with the space provided by BSchool who recently announced plans to open a BSchool campus in Northern Tasmania.

The internal layout and furniture for both hubs has been designed and built by local Launceston students from the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture & Design, led by Mark Bagguley and Luke Dineen.

The name Enterprize is in honour of the tall ship that was built in Hobart and sailed from Launceston, to establish Melbourne in 1835.

A public Open Day will run from 10am to 4pm on Sunday, October 2, where everyone is welcome to look at the space, meet local startups, see new technologies in action and find out about the opportunities the space will provide for the local community.

Image: With young programmer Will Cook and his father David at the official opening of Enterprize Launceston

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