There are three main formats to a PhD thesis at UTS (link):

  1. Conventional thesis. One volume, with chapters
  2. Thesis by compilation. A coherent collection of articles or publishable manuscripts
  3. “Thesis including artefacts, exhibition, performance or portfolio of professional or creative work relevant to the discupline”

We’ll ignore the first one.

The second one is increasingly common, since it gets students to publish while completing their PhD, making them more competitive on the (academic) job market. Depending on your supervisor, you may still be encouraged to publish your intellectual findings via conference proceedings or journals. This will help increase your credibility and authority as a (double blind peer-reviewed) subject matter expert.

The third format is the main one to focus on for the Entreprenuerial PhD. It’s also known as a practice-based PhD, creative-output based PhD or NTRO-based PhD. This has two components:

  1. The creative component: “Artefact(s), exhibition, performance or portfolio of professional or creative work relevant to the discipline.”
  2. The academic component: “A written thesis, which is a significant intellectual undertaking in its own right.”

Any non-traditional research output (NTRO) is a combination of those two components. There is a very wide range of possibilities for the creative component, and still the fundamental requirement to include a summary of how the work constitutes research and how that research is embodied by the creative component. The academic component might not be as detailed as in a conventional thesis or thesis by compilation, but the overall process of evaluating NTROs still includes consideration of where the creative component was exhibited (or pitched), and what gatekeeping (e.g. peer review) was involved.

According to the ARC

Just as ARC sets criteria for what is research (link), they also have criteria for what are Non-Traditional Research Outputs (NTROs).

As per their website (https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/era/nationalreport/2018/pages/section1/non-traditional-research-outputs-ntros/)

“In ERA some research outputs do not take the form of published books, book chapters, journal articles or conference publications. These are referred to as non-traditional research outputs (NTROs). Examples of NTROs include:

This leaves a lot of room for interpretation of what is a report (e.g. business plan / pitch) or creative work (product, service, new venture, ..).

Within UTS