Welcome to The Never Ending Startup Podcast Episode 3- Startup Journey and Stories of Longevity - A special Interview by Dr Jon with Leonie Cutts- CCS Corporation. Leonie Cutts discusses their new app called Carisa an app that provides game-like image-driven activities for carers and families including aged care situations. CCS is an accelerator startup with the Integrated Innovation Network (I2N) at the University of Newcastle. Dr Jon focuses on key themes of the story so far,  journey, inspiration and the future.
The Never Ending Startup Podcast: Lessons for Modern Startup Journey & Stories of Longevity
The podcast  shares Dr Jon’s insightful entrepreneurial journey, history and inspirations.

It includes interviews with ‘accelerator startups’ from The University of Newcastle’s I2N Innovation Hub about their journey and inspirations.

It also covers the state of Australia’s innovation ecology and lessons for new startups.

The podcast and book build a social and entrepreneurial framework for startup journey and  longevity.

In this episode we concentrate on the theme of journey.
This JDNEST Episode’s Central Question:
Will your startup end with one invention? Or go on to spawn a series that morph through time?

A startup is founded on a central idea; your great idea! Which should be treated like an infant of sorts.

The idea will grow and weather by being be attacked and supported.

Along the way it will suddenly spawn new seeds of thought and evolve. Often into something else all together.

This is not a sign of failure of the infant idea but merely its adolescence.

Dr Jonathan Drane, July 2024
This episode covers: An Interview with Leonie Cutts of CCS Corporation and new app Carisa
We are excited to announce our first special interview iwith an Accelerator Startup from University of Newcastle’s I2N Integrated Innovation Network.

Dr Jon  interviews Leonie Cutts who is the co-founder  CCS Corporation known for creating virtual and physical image cards for facilitation, coaching and self‑discovery.

CCS Corporation has now been developing and distributing the CCS Cards concept for over 20 years, with the tool having been used in more than 70 countries around the world.

Their most recent innovation is called Carisa which is an easy-to-use mobile app that provides game-like image-driven activities for carers and families including aged care situations.
What is  The Never Ending Startup Podcast About? Startup Journey and Stories
The Never Ending Startup is the story of award winning researcher, writer, innovator, historian  and entrepreneur Dr Jonathan Drane and his journey through the world of  high rise construction, property development and then into  start up ventures, the genesis of which he discovered only recently, had its inception over half a century earlier.
Dr Jon’s Startup Journey and who inspired him
His first start up called Optimum Search was established in 1993 and still stands today with a deep quarter century history of entrepreneurial achievement and ‘catalyst research’ with some failure along the way, the latter being a central part of the DNA of its success.

The story starts in the midst of his post war 1950s upbringing as a hot housed adolescent who was introduced by his father to a strange mixture of  ‘chemistry sets’ , explorer Jacques Cousteau, physicist Professor Julius Sumner Miller and Australia’s Professor Harry Messel with the latter’s famous blue science book being in nearly every high school class room.
How History of Innovation guided Dr Jon’s startup journey and stories
In this way the story also  provides a lived ‘side history’ of Australia’s post war innovation path, its ‘lucky country’ label, and  its  subsequent ‘brain drain’ then independence and research initiatives from CSIRO to a modern innovation ecosystem.
Taking Dr Jon’s Lessons to the Modern Startup: Interviews with startups from UON I2N
Spurred by his attendance at innovation hubs and s...