Anthill Magazine

Hitler launches Australia’s Innovation Policy

We’ve all seen the “Hitler loses it” mashups, where aspiring Spielbergs have taken the now famous bunker scene from Downfall and replaced the sub-titles. In fact, it’s fast becoming a new benchmark for popular culture. If your ‘issue’ hasn’t been expropriated by Hitler yet, it can’t ...

The proposed Australian R&D tax reforms… Do they walk the talk?

This article is the third in our Australia Day series. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a close look at Commercialisation Australia, our track record as a nation of innovators and whether our legislation is aligned with the needs of the private sector. ...

Can Australia really claim to be a nation of innovators?

This article is the second in our Australia Day series. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a close look at Commercialisation Australia, the proposed R&D tax incentive reforms and how these reforms match (or conflict) with the political language used to promote them. ...

Australian Innovation Policy… Where the bloody hell are you?

Every government will say its ‘commitment to innovation’ is second-to-none. Every government will jump at the chance to demonstrate this ‘commitment’, citing numerous initiatives that invariably trump those of the administration that came before it. This is because the effects of policy on innovation are extremely hard ...

Public feedback sought for proposed Federal R&D Tax Concession changes

As part of the Federal Government’s dramatic overhaul of its commercialisation program, now called Commercialisation Australia, the R&D Tax Concession will replace the R&D Tax Credit from 1 July, 2010. Just prior to Christmas, exposure draft legislation (pdf) and explanatory material needed to implement the changes ...

The most useless machine ever?

This neat little invention caught my attention for its sheer uselessness. Yup, you read me right. The following clip features one of the most useless things I’ve ever seen. It’s so useless, it prompted me to spend 20 minutes exploring its history and another 20 ...

Creativity vs Innovation – A fool’s dilemma

To succeed, innovation needs to be more than a nebulous desire to foster creativity in an organisation. It needs to be a concrete business process driven from the top. Roger La Salle explains. It’s probably only in the last forty years that creativity started to gain ...

Nine promising projects secure over $630k in federal COMET funding

Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, has announced the latest round of COMET funding, with nine projects sharing $630,600. As we wrote about last week, the COMET program will be closed to new applicants on 1 January 2010, subsumed by the new ...

Is Australian prosperity too dependent on the rise of China?

According to the latest rankings released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, China is again our number one trading partner. But it raises the question: Do we have too many eggs in the China basket? It’s official: we are ‘hugging the panda’ again. China is again ...

14 promising projects secure nearly $1m in Federal COMET funding

Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, has announced the latest round of COMET funding, with 14 projects sharing $985,600. They are: