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Regional Breakthroughs – Creative solutions to your regional problems

C2C wins Awards!


We have heard it said that Regional Breakthroughs always seems to end up with the really hard projects, the ones where no one is sure where to start and not at all sure where they want to finish up either. They just know there should be a better way to make things happen in their community.

This is where we come in. We help communities (we define communities as the whole community including business, organisations, government and of course individuals) to solve complex problems, create workable solutions and do this in a context of community values, ideas and outcomes.

If you have a few minutes I will take you through some of the projects we have worked on just to give you an idea of how we work and what we have been able to achieve using, what is admittedly, a different approach than you will find with most consultants.

Northern Advanced Manufacturing Industry Group (NAMIG) Project

We are especially proud of what has been achieved in Northern Adelaide during the formation and implementation of the Concept 2 Creation Program conducted under the leadership of the advanced manufacturing industry.

The rule book on industry/education engagement was thrown out and rewritten with this program as a group of committed business leaders along with enlightened local councils, schools and teachers were willing to try something that hadn’t been done with schools in this way or on this scale before. We did this under the scrutiny of high community expectations and some cynics who actively worked to try to make sure it did not succeed.

Our role was to take a group of people from industry, a group of schools and a big handful of other organizations and get them to work together to change the way young people experienced the opportunities in their region, to develop into the kind of people who can make things happen in the real world of work and business and who can apply the knowledge they are acquiring in school through solving real problems and providing real services and products.

Our method was to develop a plan with industry that would work for the young people in that particular community.

Northern Adelaide is on the outer fringes of the capital city of South Australia. It is a complex place of great economic growth in the past 15 years and yet some of the highest unemployment levels. Most of the “good” jobs are held by people from outside the region and very high levels of local people work outside the region.

Young people have not aspired to tertiary education at anywhere near the levels of other areas, schools are difficult to staff – it can be a tough area.

This dichotomy of economic development and seemingly intractable social disadvantage has frustrated community leaders for years. Importantly the young people of the region were not benefiting from these economic opportunities because they were not aware of them and could not see themselves taking advantage of them.

We set out to change this armed with a plan that the industry leadership, with our guidance, developed over a number of months. I can still recall the night we finalized this ambitious reinvention of how industry and schools could work together. I had not expected to continue to work on the program past the planning stage but was rightly proud of what we had achieved with the plan. I recall saying, “ This is a fantastic plan and if it can be pulled off it will change the way kids experience school in this region for some time. But I pity the poor sod who will have to make this work.” I must say those words came back to haunt me many times over the next four years.

The implementation of the plan was put out to tender and Regional Breakthroughs ended up the consultancy company that was tasked with guiding and facilitating this ambitious program.

It was difficult, there were delays in funding, difficult local small “p” politics with many “helping” organisations being anything but a help. Schools were slow to trust the possibilities of the new program, in fact all we had was a plan not a program and it seemed at times the whole community was just waiting for us to fail.

How did we work through this to get to the point where by the end of 2008 over 3000 students had been through the program which came to be known as the Concept 2 Creation (C2C) problem based learning program? We established one rule for ourselves and the young people - You can’t give up!

The C2C Program became a new kind of learning experience for young people, one in which they had both choice and responsibility where their teachers were not only at school but also people from business, experts in science, maths and technology, people from the community and most importantly their fellow students and themselves.

A real education revolution took place as the young people used their creativity to apply what they were learning to real products and services that they had come up with and were responsible for making happen using an adapted manufacturing/problem based learning process that incorporated visits to industry, industry going to schools and university staff assisting as well. And all of this was done within the context of the student’s project.

As you can imagine, the students started coming to school more, engaging with school in a more meaningful way and in some schools there was a 500% increase in the take up of science, maths and technology subjects in senior school.

Schools also changed going from a “teacher telling to a students doing” teaching environment. They opened their doors to the outside world with dramatic results for the young people.

But industry hasn’t missed out on getting what they needed either. This year Regional Breakthroughs put together a comprehensive scholarship program for BAE Systems and C2C which provides students with not only financial assistance but also mentoring and work experience. The first students to have benefited by the program have entered university and are will on their way to being the foundation for the workforce of the future for the region.

We can say with confidence that it is the way you go about bringing people together that makes all the difference and the results in Northern Adelaide have been all the proof we need.

“It has been a fantastic journey over the past few years. You have delivered a miracle for the region and have changed the lives of hundreds of our youth in Northern Adelaide. Forever Grateful.” David Penfold Director Salisbury Business and Export Centre City of Salisbury

Wide Bay Burnett Aviation Industry Investment and Re Investment Project

In the Wide Bay Burnett region in Queensland we were asked by the state government to help organize an investment strategy for the aviation industry which had been growing locally over a number of years.

I think it would be safe to say that at this point most consultants would invite a few local business people to a meeting, put together a plan, write a report and submit an invoice. Probably good business for them, certainly easier but it would be hard to claim that anything had changed or improved.

But as I said, we don’t go for the easy option and frankly sometimes our balance sheet reflects this, at least temporarily. Instead we spend a great deal of time in the region finding out more about how the region is working. In Wide Bay we spent this time talking to people to work out the political situation, how people felt about their own and the other towns in the region, and most importantly – we talked to people in the aviation industry directly at their businesses and on their terms.

The first thing we discovered was that Wide Bay Burnett is not really a natural region but a group of towns roughly grouped together because they had a bit in common. In fact there were up to 2 hours distance apart, some on the coast some inland all with distinct personalities and issues.

The region is a mix of agriculture, the famous Bundaberg Rum comes from there, tourism and surprisingly aviation with three small aircraft manufacturers producing recreational, surveillance and training aircraft. But just because someone came up with the name Wide Bay Burnett for their region didn’t necessarily mean anyone identified themselves that way.

But government said, “It’s simple, just get the businesses and local councils together and work out a plan for aviation investment. “

However, what they forgot to take into account was that the people in business didn’t consider themselves in an industry, didn’t see that they had much in common and weren’t really interested in working with the competition from another town in the region.

In some cases there was a great deal of mistrust between the businesses and councils, in others everyone worked together well. In some cases some of the businesses already worked together and in others they didn’t know the other businesses existed and were very wary of the others. Local councils made attempts to work together but were really in competition and all in all most people went about their business, annoyed that they couldn’t get things done or move forward because of government blockages, interference, inaction or all of the above and unable to find the time to step back and work out a strategic way to improve their business or there communities.

Actually I suspect this looks exactly like almost every other regional community.

This is where what we do differently really kicks in.

Like I said we actually talk to people, as many as possible. People will tell you what they need, perhaps not in so many words but through their actions, how they interact and sometimes in what they don’t say.

Then we take time to reflect on what is really going on in this community, I like to say you can’t work out what needs to be done if you rely on what people would like to be true rather than what is true.

At this stage the tricky work of community consultations takes place. Our view is that people who are working in a business and in a community often have great ideas they just need to have the opportunity to put them forward and have someone else make sense of their ideas in a greater context. In Wide Bay we met with people in their own towns at their convenience rather than ours.

Armed with what we believed to be pretty good knowledge of the region, the communities and the aviation businesses we put together a plan based on what we believe reflected the needs of the businesses and community augmented by our own experience, expertise and knowledge of current national and international influences.

This plan went back to everyone involved for approval of course but more importantly to affirm that this was the solution people were seeking. It was commented on that, “This is just what we didn’t know we wanted or needed until you helped us work it out!”

The results in Wide Bay Burnett – The region was declared a Centre for Aviation Enterprise by the Queensland State Government and attracted the attention and funding that goes with these sorts of announcements. Aviation businesses are working together more and subsequently getting resolutions to some of their long term problems with regulators and other government authorities. The local governments are working better in general with business and with each other and the region has seen a steady increase in interest and investment in aviation.

For us, we saw real improvement and real change. Anyone can write a report that gathers dust on a bureaucrat’s shelf. It takes insight, effort and respect to change things for the better. And it is always worth it.

Waikerie First Campaign


If you are one of those thousands of people who live along the Murray River in Australia then Will Rogers statement will certainly resonate with you. Over 150 years of stupidity has gotten the River into a big mess. Dying ancient river red gums, acid soils, communities on the brink of closing down and yet it goes on.

The experts and political leaders (the smart ones?) continue to duck and weave as they either avoid decisions or make catastrophically bad ones.

About a year ago some of the leading business people in the Waikerie Region decided that it was time for the community to take back control of their future. They worked out that even “stupid” ideas from the community were going to have more success than the ones government was coming up with. Turned out this wasn’t so stupid after all.

Regional Breakthroughs was asked to help them find a way to turn their community around. What we found was that Waikerie had everything it needed to reinvent their community. Through a series of workshops the community identified its strengths and values, came up with a collective vision for the future and identified specific ideas that they wanted to put into action.

After some months of real progress we are currently looking for ways to fund these ideas but as importantly there is a new sense of hope and possibility which is clear in the many activities and events that are planned for the next few months. We will keep you posted on what happens next, we believe great things.

Here’s what we do and how we do it.

We help your local community leadership to Get Started through a series of workshops and consultations. This helps us better understand you, your industry, community and more importantly for you to understand yourselves. Sounds odd but the first step has to be defining what you are and what you want in the long run.

We also understand that many communities struggle to pay for the best Consultants and therefore often miss out on opportunities to grow and excel. We at Regional Breakthroughs take a different approach because we see our role as more of a long term “Community Partner” and initially offer our Services at a Discount until additional funding is found. (subject to terms and conditions)

We will also Assist you to find funding that can help pay the way for the program/initiative, long term planning etc you want to develop and implement.

We then Manage and Coordinate the programs with you and make sure things actually get done.

Sounds simple, but of course it isn’t. But it is straightforward. People in the community provide the leadership and we provide the wherewithal. This might include providing advice, introducing you to people and organizations who can help, applying our own unique insights and helping lead the community discussions.

Contact us now to find out more!