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 the current norm, since it gets students to publish while completing their PhD, making them more competitive on the (academic) job market. Most academic supervisors will encourage you 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 and thought leader.

The third format is optional for the Entreprenuerial PhD. Many ePhD candidates primarily want the expertise, credibility and thought leadership, and take the development of a venture, product or service as a given. However, the venture’s business model, product or service can also be considered as the creative manifestation of the research; i.e., an alternative way to express your research. It can therefore be part of 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” such as the business model, product or service
  2. The academic component: “A written thesis, which is a significant intellectual undertaking in its own right” which explains how the creative component is a manifestation of the research and enabled answering one or more academically grounded research questions.

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, ..).