About Dolby

Dolby was founded in 1965 in London, United Kingdom by Ray Dolby, and has since expanded to have a global presence. We revolutionize the science of sight and sound through innovative research and engineering, empowering creatives to elevate their stories, and offering fans unforgettable experiences.

Our revolutionary technology called Dolby Atmos® powers anew way of perceiving songs by placing different elements of the music all around the listener, so it feels like you’re inside the song. The same technology is applied in gaming where users can explore new worlds with sounds placed with three-dimensional precision, so gamers can react with greater speed and accuracy. Dolby Atmos brings incredible clarity and realism for more immersive gaming and music enjoyment.

Our HDR vision technology is called Dolby Vision® and is now available as a technology in many major manufacturer TV sets. Dolby Vision brings entertainment to life with an ultravivid picture, brighter highlights and darker shadows. Watching TV now feels as if you are looking through a window rather than at a screen.

Filmmakers and creatives utilise Dolby technologies to enrich their media content, whether that be the latest blockbuster film, or anew band looking to enhance the sound on their latest music release. All this great technology would not be possible without the immense research and development output from our global engineering teams.

Australia is a major research and development hub for Dolby.The team at Dolby Australia play an important role in developing many of the above technologies and in incubating new business opportunities for Dolby. It’s a routine experience for engineers at Dolby Australia to have their work deployed in devices across the globe, from mobile phones and laptops to sound bars and TVs.

Up until recently access to Dolby technologies was limited to device manufacturers and professional content producers, the big transition towards the future for Dolby was to acknowledge that content we consume is now also happening outside of these traditional contexts and workflows. To realise our vision of the future, we built Dolby.io to enable media application developers everywhere to access Dolby technologies to enhance the media experiences for their audiences.

Dolby.io takes many of Dolby’s key processing algorithms and places them in the cloud, allowing easy access to developers through a set ofApplication Programming Interfaces (API’s). Having an API platform allows us to expand to reach a much broader set of creatives who can build and experiment with Dolby technologies. The experiences can now go beyond just the cinema and music studios!

‍

It is this kind of innovative development that has allowed such creative technologies to emerge from Dolby. So how do students use innovative thinking in their own projects?

Make time for thinking

It’s important to focus on this for a portion of the scheduled work, make sure you make time for brainstorming, whether that be with your team or by yourself. Some of the key products you use today, didn’t come out without a huge amount of time spent in the innovative thinking space!

Observe

What’s currently a problem you can observe? Maybe this problem requires multiple solutions? Take time to stand back and survey the scene, this is not just about coming up with a new product idea, but sometimes simply looking at what you have and seeing what’s missing.

Work with others

There’s nothing like a fresh opinion! Take your idea and bounce it off someone else, you’ll be surprised at where that conversation can lead. Often this will trigger off other thought paths and even build up excitement for your already pitched ideas.

Change your scenery

With so much of our time online, we often forget to take our thoughts somewhere else. Being inspired to think innovatively can often be sparked by a simple change of scenery, or even visiting a place closely linked to our forming thoughts. This one ties nicely in with ‘observe’.

Finally, don’t give up! Failure is ok

Not all our great ideas come to fruition or work out as planned. Some of the greatest products have come after many failures. Embrace your failures, learn from them and use those learnings to motivate you for your next project.

In summary, Dolby constantly looks towards the future and innovates to meet the needs of its customers. Innovation is a critical element in how we operate as a company and helps us move forward as a business.Therefore, it’s vital for you as a developing engineer to embrace your inner creativity and bring this to life in your university and personal projects. Innovation is a key skill for you to take into your future employment opportunities.

‍