In the contemporary period, the idea of a ‘national economy’ in Australia is continually reinforced by national discourses of competitiveness and innovation. Our past, as described by Turnbull in his idea’s boom speech, has relied too much on the mining boom and has subsequently condensed other industries. However, unless there is a leap in investment and a long-term effort to innovate in “what we are good at producing”, a downward trend in the wealth of the original country is to […]
With the release of the Australian Innovation Agenda in December 2015, Australia is experiencing significant economic and social change. Indeed, we are now entering a new era in which technology, research and ideas will become our most valuable cargo. Successfully leveraging these changes will ultimately require a social focus on innovation, collaboration and digital disruption. Specifically, universities offer a huge potential in shifting the Australian landscape to be more innovative, however, they are currently debilitated by low collaboration levels. In […]
The valley of death, whilst the expression may spur images of dystopian lowland, the meaning is far less sinister – nonetheless, bridging it can be a nightmare. For those who are unaware, the commercialisation of innovation is often caricatured as the melancholic term, ‘the valley of death’. In relation to this, the 2015 Australian Innovation System Report, released last year by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, stated that Australia is exceptional when it comes to research, but the […]
In Australia, the discourse of business and government is rife with mentions to innovation, disruption and dexterity. As a result, the policy settings of government and our macroeconomic environment has seen a shift in the traditional backbone of our economy. We’ve moved from a mining-led economy to one which is increasingly driven by technology and innovation. Consider, for example, the fact that by the turn of the century there were approximately 200 million objects connected via the Internet, predominantly human-operated […]