Professor Rowena Barrett

Biography

Professor Rowena Barrett is QUT's Pro Vice-Chancellor (Entrepreneurship and Regional Innovation). She is an experienced and authentic leader who brings integrity, purpose and commitment to engaging people across all domains inside and outside the university whether this is around regional development, innovation, entrepreneurial mindset and practice or research. Rowena leads the development of an encouraging, supportive and collaborative environment for entrepreneurial action at QUT and regional innovation across Queensland and beyond.

The Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Entrepreneurship and Regional Innovation) is inside the entry to B Block (B110) on the Gardens Point campus.  Known affectionately as 'the fish bowl', you will find Rowena’s Project Officer and Executive Officer sharing the space. The regional innovation work is led from here while the entrepreneurship activity is centred in the foundry on Level 2, B Block, Gardens Point.

Rowena brings academic and practical understanding of motivations and drivers for entrepreneurship and innovation that is often context-dependent and place-based. She has been instrumental in activating QUT's entrepreneurial DNA as well as ensuring the university is a key player in the wider Queensland innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem. She manages the university’s regional Queensland MOUs, engagement with the Regional University Study Hubs, and delivers Queensland Connects, a regional ecosystem leadership program. She works closely with colleagues at MIT Sloan School of Management, those running entrepreneurial spaces across Australian universities, and those across government and industry.

Rowena firmly ascribes to Howard Stevenson's definition of entrepreneurship as 'the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources currently controlled' as it makes clear all can engage in entrepreneurship in its many forms and contexts. With the enthusiastic and highly capable QUT Entrepreneurship team, she ensures entrepreneurship education is available across the institution, whether that is for students, staff or alumni. The mission to realise QUT's entrepreneurial potential can only be achieved through collaboration and alongside a regular calendar of events, the team are keen to support activities, whether within or outside class, in the research, teaching or student engagement domains, with staff and students and the industry and alumni community.

The QUT Entrepreneurship learning program seeks to inspire and develop entrepreneurship mindset and skill while the inclusive foundry spaces are for entrepreneurial practice: in B Block (B230) on the Gardens Point campus and in the Tinkerspace in R Block (R224) on the Kelvin Grove campus. These spaces act as the hubs for the wide range of entrepreneurship activity at QUT whether in the for-profit or for-purpose space and staff and student ambassadors are available to help all visitors find the learning, resources and network connections needed on their entrepreneurial journey.

As an academic, Rowena is widely recognized as an expert in managing people in smaller and entrepreneurial firms.  Through her research and in the supervision of higher degree by research students, Rowena has sought to unlock understandings of effective individual, organisational and managerial practice in impactful engagements in collaboration with industry and government.  She has a sizeable research portfolio and her work has been published widely in a range of different formats and media as she seeks to engage with diverse audiences.  She is a strong advocate for doing things differently and for academic knowledge to be shared widely.  Rowena is ambitious about collaboratively engendering knowledge, skills, innovation, regional development and engagement, and entrepreneurship for the benefit of the University, our students and the wider community.