Baden
U’Ren
inspire | empower | grow
Innovation in Organisations
Do you need someone to sell a vision and catalyse action?
Baden helps senior management to drive strategic initiatives by combining his academic and industry expertise with an engaging and inspirational demeanour.
Baden can deliver keynote speeches, facilitate workshops, or engage in short to medium term contracts.
Innovation in Education
The Future of Work is upon us and our educational institutions are innovating in curriculum, environment, and community to prepare our youth.
Baden leverages his academic and industry expertise to help senior leadership and teachers design educational programs to build future work skills and capabilities.
Custom Contracts
Are you looking for a guide to help you achieve, or even unearth, your goals?
Baden can help you to bring clarity to complex situations, empowering you and your organisation to move forward and gain traction. Be it business growth, family office structuring, strategy formulation and implementation, or simply a personal resource to discuss and debate, Baden is available for individual engagements ranging from one-off activations to ongoing roles.
Case Study | Adbri
Adbri, one of Australia’s pioneering construction materials and industrial minerals manufacturing companies, was facing significant external threats to performance, including disruptive competition and impending environmental standards.
Over several years Baden helped senior management to drive an innovation agenda to improve performance. He delivered a keynote speech on disruptive innovation, facilitated a new product strategy stress test, and conducted a change management workshop to shift the mindset of the sales teams.
Case Study | Services Australia
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for Services Australia services reached record highs. Internal process improvement became a strategic priority and Baden was engaged to run multi-site design sprints with development and operations teams across Brisbane, Canberra, and Adelaide.
watch a summary here
Case Study | Queensland Government
The Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries was investing in a collaborative research and commercialisation facility in Emerald, the Central Queensland Smart Cropping Center. Baden was engaged to facilitate a co-design workshop, laying the foundations for ongoing collaboration among researchers, farmers, industry and government.
Case Study | Bond University
For more than a decade Baden led the Entrepreneurship and Innovation disciplines at Bond University, driving E&I education across and beyond campus with intiatives such as the Bond Business Accelerator, Bond Transformer, and the Silicon Valley Study Tour. He was the inaugural Director of the Commercialisation Center and was instumental in positioning Bond as a leading Australian entreprenurial University.
Article in
The Australian
Silicon Valley
Study Tour
Case Study | St Andrews
Baden has designed a range of programs and conducted professional development sessions for staff, all focused on developing future work skills. Highlights include:
- Innovate & Create | a 12-week commercialisation program established in 2017
- INNOV8 | a year-long future-of-work program for all Year 8 students established in 2024
- Ongoing teacher Professional Development
Case Study | CG Spectrum
CG Spectrum is a top 25 global educator in the creative industries. Over a period of three years, Baden:
- Completely redesigned the Diploma and Bachelor of Business degrees to prioritise entrepreneurial capability development, contextualised to the creative industries
- Contributed to the design and led the development of six new creative industry degrees, achieving full TEQSA accreditation and launching in Jan’24
- Inaugural Dean of Business and Dean of Creative
Case Study | Somerset College
Baden’s relationship with the school began as an in-kind contributor to the entrepreneurial endeavours of the school in 2017, and was formalised with his appointment as Entrepreneur-in-Residence in 2021. He has championed the development of entrepreneurial capability, with curriculum integration in years 5-12 and co-curricular activations throughout the year. He is the Festival Director for Somerset’s annual Celebration of Entrepreneurship, a two-day on-campus immersion featuring 20+ speakers, year 6 market stalls, year 9 food stalls, and a range of other components.
Family Office Strategy
Managing the multi-faceted implications of running a family business for the benefit of future generations can be challenging. Baden works with family members to formalise a family governance structure, often involving a family office and related entities.
Drawing on his time at Bond University with the Australian Centre for Family Enterprise, along with numerous examples of Australian families in business, Baden can help you strategically develop a unique structure tailored to your family’s individual needs.
“it was such a successful, meaningful, and unforgettable two days”
“I really appreciate your time, knowledge and effort in helping us achieve the unity we needed to move forward”
Commercialisation & Growth
Baden has advised hundreds of early stage ventures over the years, with some engagements becoming more formal. Whether it be preparing for investment, professionalising the firm to enable growth, or purely as a resource for the founder(s), Baden can add value through discipline, a critical eye, and decades of commercialisation experience.
“In 60 minutes
of talking with Baden, I
learned more than I would
learn in unlimited time with almost anyone else. I went into our discussion with a very specific question I wanted to be answered, and his insight gave me a very specific direction. I say without hyperbole that there are only a handful of people on the planet who can do
what he does.”
Incubators & Accelerators
Baden has designed, delivered and managed numerous accelerator programs, with significant outcomes. The Bond Business Accelerator was a critical component of the broader entrepreneurial activities at Bond University along with Gold Coast Demo Day, resulting in the title of one of Australia’s most entrepreneurial universities. He has facilitated more than twenty Startup Weekends and other hackathons, and delivered sessions in other accelerator programs.
External Peer Review
To maintain TEQSA accreditation, Australian Higher Education providers must conduct periodic reviews, including external expert reviews of their programs.
Baden works with Faculties of Business to perform external peer reviews, examining constructive alignment within and across subjects and degree programs and providing expert opinion on program design.
