Innovation in Australia

| May 31, 2007

As in most advanced capitalist economies, innovation in Australia is primarily defined narrowly as the application of scientific knowledge or radical technological change. But this is at odds with the reality of innovation, which is more likely to involve sustained, incremental improvements in products and processes, rather than technological breakthroughs. It is also likely to be driven by the need to solve customer and market problems more imaginatively than competitors.

At present, government policy in Australia is biased towards increasing the supply of science and research and commercialising new ideas and inventions. It pays little attention to supporting the capacity of firms to transform and adapt their business offerings to changing market conditions and customer needs. What can be done to address the bias in Australia's innovation policy?

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  1. Nick Mallory

    October 9, 2007 at 5:56 am

    A false premise

    Any business which expects the Government to improve its products and services for them is doomed to fail.  It's the management's job to do that, what else are they being paid for?  You compete by improving your performance, not by waiting for some man in the ministry to do it for you.  The best thing the Government can do is butt out, reduce red tape and let businesses compete for themselves.  It's a free market and the cream will rise to the top.  Any Government intervention, of any sort, can only slow down development in a mass of red tape. 

    The long and squalid history of the British Government attempting to 'pick winners' during the corporate state era of the sixties and seventies only served to destroy British engineering and manufacturing.  If the Government wants to help industry then reduce taxes on it, don't tax it more to have money to waste on ill thought out schemes by polititians and public officials who've never had a proper job in their life.   Business doesn't need help from Government, it just needs the dead weight of over regulation removed from its throat.

    Lastly.  Australia makes stuff?  What exactly?  What exactly does Australia make?  Who in the world has anything, and I mean anything, with 'made in Australia' written on it?  It's a mining and agricultural economy, rather like Gaul in the first century BC.  Calling it an 'advanced capitalist country' is claiming membership of a club which belies its third world reality.  I'd write more but I'm off to shop for Korean electronics and a German car.

  2. Leo Silver

    October 26, 2007 at 12:44 am

    Open Source Software as a Springboard for Innovation

    Open source software represents an opportunity for innovation in the manner as described in the opening post to this forum.

    As Open Source Software is distributed with full source code and under a license which allows anyone to use and modify the code it can provide a springboard for the development of new business innovation, both for internal company use and for the development of applications for third parties.

    By using existing Open Source Software as a starting point, a company dramatically reduces the gap from their idea to an operational solution. The depth and breadth of Open Source Software is quite staggering (Google Open Source Software or have a look at http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/). Moreover, it is supported as both a product platform and a business methodology by technology giants such as IBM, HP and Google.

    Organisations who feel their innovation vision is a little beyond their delivery capacity may be surprised and inspired by what is available as Open Source Software to kick-start their innovation projects.

  3. shannon

    April 6, 2008 at 11:43 pm

    Not an either or problem
    It is not up to government to devise a policy which transforms businesses. Business must do that for itself. What business can do is draw on a wider range of experience in recruiting staff than simply looking for MBAs. Then it can leverage the benefits of different skillsets and frames of reference. Science, arts etc then becomes an input to business creativity rather than a separated activity. The idea that science can only connect with business via a spin off company from a university R&D department is mistaken. What can be done to address the bias in business thinking about where its next bright idea comes from?

  4. GavanS

    April 20, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    Ethanol production

    The most impressive thing about search engines is one can quickly find relative topics on subjects of interest within milliseconds. With 1000 "brain-stormers" in action on the weekend, I'm totally stunned by the fact there is not a mention of Ethanol apart from the fact that one Australian car manufacturer is working towards exporting hybrid cars that include ethanol powered hybrids. May I say that I'm disappointed that the following topics were not covered.

    Bio-Fuels

    Ethanol powered vehicles ( I thought this stuff emits less CO2)

    Ethanol production in rural Australia with genetically modified drought resistant plants. ( A great future for fringe farmers)

    As soon as we get the World's car manufacturers design out dependency of crude oil for internal combustion powered vehicles, the sooner our climate recovers from our (well maybe the USA) high energy needs by- product called Global Warming

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