Brisbane is pushing very hard, in words and deeds, to position itself as an global-level envelope-pusher.

In its biggest shove yet, the city last month rolled out a scorecard that measures business innovation within its boundaries, along with innovation’s effect on business growth, productivity and the region’s economic health.

The Brisbane Innovation Scorecard ^[1] was unveiled during Enable2010 ^[2] — 10 days of promotion and celebration of new ideas generated in Australia’s third-largest city.

The scorecard, which surveyed 100 Brisbane-area businesses, built on a 2009 survey by Brisbane City Council that concluded that more than 80 percent of the city’s businesses made significant investments in innovation over the past three years.

While performing its primary role as a calling card and marketing tool, the scorecard is also supposed to challenge Brisbane businesses to keep the numbers up on new ideas and approaches to products and services.

Among the scorecard’s findings:

• Two-thirds of the surveyed businesses had invested in new or significantly improved goods or services within the past three years.
• About 75 percent had undertaken new or significantly improved methods of manufacturing.
• Logistics and distribution methods were the least likely to have been innovated over the last three years. About 38 percent had introduced new or significantly improved logistics or distribution processes.
• Sixty-seven percent reported new or significantly improved support activities for processes such as maintenance systems or operations for purchasing, accounting or computing.

“The scorecard will help showcase Brisbane as a prosperous, entrepreneurial city and further strengthen our reputation as Australia’s new world city,” Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said in a statement.

Upbeat words, indeed. But what about deeds? Well, as part of the Enable2010′s events, Australia’s largest research and development facility of enterprise software opened officially in Brisbane. TechnologyOne ^[3] christened a $12 million, 6,700-square-foot building in Fortitude Valley.

Image by Cyron ^[4]