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A Connected Community

Tonsley is built to cultivate strong ties.

Tonsley Innovation District has been designed and organised to stimulate new and higher levels of connectivity, collaboration and innovation.

This allows relationships between individuals and organisations to thrive, generate, sharpen and accelerate the advancement of ideas and commercialisation — all connected by shared spaces, transit, skilled networks of people and digital technology.

Connect with like-minded innovators

"Our investment in Tonsley reflects our commitment to stimulating jobs growth, bringing our students together with the very best academics, researchers and entrepreneurs in a state-of-the-art facility that encourages innovation and drives new industry."

Professor Colin Stirling, Vice Chancellor, Flinders University

Share and collaborate

Tonsley Innovation District’s success is determined by the quality of the collaboration between its business partners.

Spaces for collaboration

There’s a network of formal and informal places for people to relax, meet and exchange ideas, encouraging collaboration and shared facilities, including:

  • Meeting rooms and conference facilities at Flinders University
  • Meeting rooms and conference facilities at TAFE SA
  • CO-HAB/Innovyz low-cost shared office spaces.

There are also public spaces giving the community interesting meeting and recreation spots:

  • Town Square precinct, including the Central Forest and plaza area with retail outlets
  • Other urban forests located with the Main Assembly Building
  • Eastern and Western entry plaza open spaces.

Collaborative networks

Tonsley is an ideal base to network with existing and emerging industries and businesses.

  • eNVIsion: Flinders New Venture Institute’s co-working spaces at Tonsley promote the cross-pollination of a like-minded community with university research and expertise to help innovators grow their business.
  • CO-HAB: CO-HAB is a not-for-profit company providing co-working space at Tonsley for people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. CO-HAB was been established to support cluster development and initiatives. Members have the opportunity to operate their businesses, connect and collaborate with other tenants.
  • Innovyz: Through a highly interactive and collaborative nine-month program, Innovyz provides end-to-end support to help entrepreneurs and businesses build, grow and bring their innovations to market. Innovyz also provides nine-month programs for universities, individuals, companies and research centres that are unique in the world of business accelerators.
  • Venture Dorm: Venture Dorm provides an educational environment for people who want to learn how entrepreneurs build new ventures and then create one themselves. The aim is taking an idea, finding a viable business model which is scalable and repeatable, from scratch, all in just 12 weeks or less. Develop the mindset and skills to survive the roller coaster world of new venture creation.

Access to a Skilled Workforce

Tonsley’s collaborative culture embeds education institutions and their students in industry activity.

A skilled workforce is readily employable on Tonsley’s doorstep. Together, Flinders University and TAFE SA have 8,500 students studying and training at Tonsley every year.

Flinders University’s School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics is preparing graduates to work in all four of the industry sectors that are a focus for Tonsley — with core high-value manufacturing capabilities a primary focus.

TAFE SA’s Sustainable Industries Education Centre is training the next generation of skilled workers in all aspects of green construction.

TAFE SA’s Onshore Petroleum Centre of Excellence facility is also using realistic simulations of oil and gas operations from extraction to separation to enable oil and gas workers to earn formal qualifications off-site.

For budding entrepreneurs or growing businesses, Innovyz and Flinders New Venture Institute offer programs in entrepreneurship and commercialisation skills, providing extensive support to take ideas and concepts from the drawing board to market.

High-speed connectivity

Tonsley has a private telecommunications optical fibre network with built-in redundancy, providing easy and cost-effective connectivity to service providers. This is in place, reducing connection time and minimising build and design work.

A commercial internet service provider at Tonsley will also not be reliant on Australia’s national broadband network infrastructure and will offer services above that network’s maximum speed threshold of 100 megabits per second.