During the 2016 Australian Financial Review innovation summit this past week, Dr. Alan Finkel Australia’s chief scientist, spoke to the imbalance of government spending on innovation. Business Insider quoted Dr. Finkel saying, “If science turns money into knowledge – then innovation turns knowledge back into money, and generally a lot more money than the taxpayers put in.” While referring to the potential gains of innovation investment from the government, the Doctor proceeded to share a shocking statistic that industry leaders […]
The innovation statement, released in December, unveiled a $1.1 billion plan to foster innovation with 24 new measures across 11 different Government groups. Certainly, the plan is wide-ranging; however, it falls short on delivering a globally competitive commercialisation model – an area in which Australia is struggling. To clarify, the 2015 Australian Innovation System Report, released by the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, stated that Australia is exceptional when it comes to research, but the nation is still struggling to commercialise […]
A characteristic feature of economic booms is that those caught up in the commotion believe they will go on perpetually. In this regard, Australia’s recent mining boom was no exception. Following the pattern of resource-based economies, a commodity price hike increased our terms of trade without any special effort on our part — adding 15 per cent to our national income over a six year period. Consequently, Australian industrial research and development (R&D) in the second half of the nineteenth and […]
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 […]