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 to measure and because ‘innovation’ as a concept (for the purpose of fuelling economic growth) is likely to attract about as many critics as CEO pay cuts (i.e. none).
But it’s been…
- 26 months since Kevin ‘07 was handed the Prime Ministerial baton;
- 25 months since Senator Kim Carr announced his Review of the National Innovation System;
- 21 months since Commercial Ready was ‘axed’;
- 17 months since Terry Cutler handed down the outcomes of Venturous Australia;
- three months since the recommendations of the report found some semblance of form in Commercialisation Australia;
- two months since most of learned that COMET would be wound up by 31 December 2009; and,
- one month since the Australian Treasury released its Exposure Draft to reform the R&D Tax Incentive, seeking feedback by 5 February.
Yesterday was Australia Day and I can’t think of a more opportune time to reflect and make a dinky-di effort to evaluate the performance of our national leaders, as advocates and reformers of Australia’s innovation agenda.
I do this for three reasons.
- Because no one else has… yet.
- Because ‘she’ll be right’ is not an Australian sentiment I adhere to.
- Because Anthill turns seven this year (that’s 21 in dog years) and I’m sick of seeing so many of our founding goals trend in the wrong direction.
Who’s carrying Australian innovation?
Yesterday was an important day for many Australians.
It offered an opportunity to celebrate our achievements as a nation. It reminded us to be thankful that we live in an open and transparent democracy. It provided a symbol of hope and optimism to all those who have recently called Australia their home.
Yet, this day also invariably raises questions about economic strengths and weaknesses, our place in the global marketplace and the role of government.
While most Australians will have enjoyed the wonderful economic prosperity that digging things out of the ground can bring (while there’s still a market in China) and enjoyed the fat of our land, grilled and shish-kebabed (when not exported to the Middle East), a minority — a rarely celebrated part of our ‘cultural mix’ — used the rare solace of a national public holiday to work on that thing often described as ‘innovation’.
I know this because about 1,287 of this small set visited our website.
Of course, I’m talking about the technologists, web programmers, engineers, scientists, back-yard inventors, business owners — Australians driven by the process of creation. Sure, this group is also motivated by the possibility of eventual financial rewards but that is not what inspires these pioneers to pour their heart and soul into their innovations — from incremental improvements to game-changing devices and technologies.
They do what they do because they see a future in making things better. And the sum of their outcomes, whether each individual innovation is commercially successful or not, is a smarter, more enriched and, hopefully, prosperous country for us all.
This is why, over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles about our Federal Government’s attempt to support this small but immensely important group.
Namely, I’ll be taking a close look at:
- Commercialisation Australia (how it works and compares to Commercial Ready);
- the proposed R&D Tax Incentive reforms (how these reforms will affect Australian industries and the ICT sector in particular); and,
- lastly, how these reforms match (or conflict) with the political language used to promote them.
While any attempt to measure a government’s possible impact on future economic prosperity is fraught with danger, it is possible to compare current and past Federal Government initiatives and review their described goals against their mechanisms.
Wish me luck! Because in another seven years I don’t want to spend my Australia Day asking, ‘Innovation… Where the bloody hell are you?!”
Also in this series…
Part 1: Australian Innovation Policy… Where the bloody hell are you?
Part 2: Can Australia really claim to be a nation of innovators?
Part 3: The proposed Australian R&D tax reforms… Do they walk the talk?
Part 4: Would you like to be CEO of Commercialisation Australia?
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View Comments
Rebecca
January 27th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
nice one. thanks for being our voice.
how can we make sure someone in power sees and reads the follow-up pieces?
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 28th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Thanks Rebecca.
When Commercial Ready was closed down, we staged a flash protest:
http://anthillonline.com/commercial-ready-scrapped-time-for-a-flash-protest/
After I’ve run through the follow-up pieces perhaps another concept for sharing the outcomes will emerge? Something creative.
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Rebecca
January 28th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
yes and something mainstream. It’s about time the public knew why their best people leave the country to take their skills elsewhere.
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Ray Hardy
January 29th, 2010 at 10:00 am
I bet that when the Board of Commercialisation Australia is announced there will be less than 50% who have actually commercialised anything, going on the Boards of Innovation Australia and the IR&D Board.
My guess is that it will be a a mix of whiny academics, public servants with MBAs (to quote an earlier article by you), some lawyers, and all coated with the Poltically Correct veneer of Gender and State Representatives.
I note the new head of Austrade Peter Grey is a long term bureaucrat – ie has never actually made or exported anything but is now in charge of helping Ausralains export. This appointment combined with what I expect likely CA Board will look like suggests that the government really doesn’t want to have people of action to assist commercialsiation or export – as there people are harder to control and get too much press vs the Minister. Instead the govt is taking the safe route of appointing some inexperienced types and then pointing out the govt’s committment.
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Nick Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Good on you Ray. Commercialisation Australia is a joke! Basically as you correctly identify a group of University academics get to control the only funds set aside for innovation – they will now do with it what they do best – spend it all on basic research with the aim of publishing fancy journal papers and without a potential innovative product in sight. Australia has way too much basic research and precious little product innovation. Commercialisation Australia will just worsen the balance and we would be better off without it, as it just allows the govt to pretend they are interested in innovation. Lets just hope that China buys our dirt for a lot longer as under current govt policies Australian innovation is pretty well doomed.
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
In part two of this series (already written but not yet posted), I make the point… “Innovation is not the R&D you do, but what you do with the R&D.” Keep an eye out, as I hope to have this second article live later today.
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Matt Hopkinson
January 29th, 2010 at 10:00 am
I am developing a business in the digital health space. What I find most frustrating is despite policy paper recommendations (Future of Heathcare), there remains little incentive to go through government agencies. After being handballed from Health Dept to Innovation, from State to Federal, it all gets too hard. Instead, like most start ups you just have to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. How many good ideas fall by the wayside in this process? Its about time we see some action, I am sick of hearing about agenda’s. If the Government was a start up business, would they succeed? One would think they wouldn’t get too far getting things done!
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Ray Hardy
January 29th, 2010 at 10:09 am
My experience with working with more than 200 tech startups over the past 5 years indicates that any that tried to access government or IIF funds have pretty much disappeared. Name one truly successful govt funded company other than Looksmart ?
By comparison, those that said stuff it, ignored the govt programs and went to the US or elsewhere directly have flourished – avega, digisensory, mutlitrode, bluepulse, Atlassian to name a few etc.
James – how about you do an article on all the COMET Investees – ie “COMET – Where are they now ?’
(If I were an investor or VC I would actually use the Commercialisation Australia investee list as a way to reduce my investment risk – that is specificaly don’t invest in companies that have got investment from the govt because the track record is they will fail).
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Nikolai Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Ray, I agree with your sentiments about COMET, as anyone needing advice from nonbusiness minded consultants about how to set up a business is doomed even before they get started. Hence i would be truly amazed if any COMET funded business was ever successful unless it was a fluke. However this is not to say that all govt business funding programs are similarly flawed. Our company Vaxine had its genesis in the past govts AusIndustry programs starting with the Biotechnology Innovation Fund through START to Commercial Ready. These provided us with critical funding that they allowed us to bridge to US government contracts on which we now run. Hence for a very modest govt investment through these excellent programs successful companies like ours have become established and have repaid this govt investment many times through job creation, taxes, export income etc. So good riddens to COMET but why did the Rudd govt have to throw out the successful Commercial Ready baby with the bath water?
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
Hi Nikolai, As part four of this series (Part #2: big picture; Part #3: R&D Tax Reform; Part #3: R&D Tax Reform & ICT), I plan to talk about Commercalisation Australia and compare it with Commercial Ready (among other programs). Watch this space.
Hi Ray, I’d hoped to do exactly what you suggest – evaluate COMET. But one of the greatest problems with COMET I have found so far is a lack of research/data/measures to evaluate its outcomes. (You can’t improve or even evaluate what you can’t measure, right?). If anyone can hit me with some hard data on COMET’s effectiveness (or otherwise), I’m all ears and eyes.
I suspect that this lack of hard data was its downfall.
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Stephen Gately
January 29th, 2010 at 10:15 am
James, looking forward to reading your thoughts on this and I know that you won’t put the usual “spin” that we all have to sift through and that you will tell it as you see it.
Australia Day must have got a lot people thinking about “Australia” (and not just lamb) as our website http://www.BuyAustralianMade.com.au received over 8000 hits with most visitors using the word Australia in their search words.
Australia has got to do more than just exporting stuff that has been dug up out of the ground.
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Lloyd
January 29th, 2010 at 10:38 am
Innovation grants: “Forget it, just get on with your business” is the advice we’ve received from people who got grants under the previous programs. In our case, we submitted a proposal which the Department lost. That seems to have been a good outcome … we just got on with our business.
Stephen Gately refers to his “Buy Australian” site. I am a great supporter of the message … but the problem is that we rarely get the choice. I can very rarely find Australian food, clothes, office equipment or much of anything in shops.
I’m hoping the government listened to Obama’s State of the Union speech yesterday: his innovation policy sounded like a lot of tripe, but he did say he wanted to double exports over the next 5 years and remove tax benefits from companies that export jobs overseas. “And to encourage … businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America … we need to export more of our goods. Because the more products we make and sell to other countries, the more jobs we support right here in America. So tonight, we set a new goal: We will double our exports over the next five years, an increase that will support two million jobs in America. To help meet this goal, we’re launching a National Export Initiative that will help farmers and small businesses increase their exports, and reform export controls consistent with national security. We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. But realizing those benefits also means enforcing those agreements so our trading partners play by the rules.”
Stephen, we all need to sing your song!
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Geoff McDonald
January 29th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Hear! Hear!
I think they spent the money for innovation on the $900 Plasma TV bonus we all got last year.
Or did it go on the Canberra think tank / talk fest where Kev’s mates got to hang out at Parliament House. Can anyone point to one useful thing that came out of that event?
Or did the money go into our new broadband network? Oops. That hasn’t happened yet.
It’s time to follow iApple’s lead and create an iAustralia campaign!
Perhaps that should be a big ‘I’ for innovation…
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anon
January 29th, 2010 at 10:53 am
i am once again disappointed with the supposed “innovation” efforts of our government… i got online to check out the finer details of innovation australia, only to discover once again that i dont qualify for anything, because i dont have any money of my own, and cant afford to get into the position of being able to tick all their other boxes because in order to do so i would have to quit my day job to work on the projects full time, which of course i also cant afford to do.
it seems to me that there is a stupid elitist assumption amongst decision makers that says: “…if you had anything of value to offer, then you wouldnt be poor…”, and they cant conceive of the idea that someone without money may in fact be a visionary genius who could bring massive value to the country.
dont both replying to me, i am tuning out of all conversations on this subject & getting rid of my subscription to this e-zine… no offense anthillians, but its just too heart breaking for me to see that nothing has changed at all.
bye all.
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Harry
January 29th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Time to stop using misunderstood terms such as “innovation” where 10 out of 10 people will have a different view and replace it with the concept of
“solving problems that matter” …. where someone needs to own the problem (which is also an identfied opportunity) and be prepared to pay for its solution. Innovation is an underlying process – not a thing in its own right. It is the process of turning knowledge into benefits for society – it is not the process of generating knowledge (which is research). Our efforts need to focus on cultivating an enterprise culture in the community as a whole.
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Rebecca Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Can two of the problems society faces be: the need for fun and money?
Are they worthy enough? I think they are.
Some inventions are just plain fun and the make the inventor lots of money which they then spend in Australia (or move somewhere with less outrageous tax!)
I think personally that it sucks that you can only qualify for grants and support if you are making something lofty for society. Case in point: Twitter would never have been supported here, nor Facebook, under current rules. Come to think of it, Tripadvisor, Youtube, Delicious, I could go on, would not have been supported as ‘worthy’ problems worth solving. Thoughts anyone?
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Just wait til you see the fine print on the R&D tax reforms as they relate to ICT (Part #3 of this series). It will make you weep. (Not with laughter.)
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Peter Clutton
January 29th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
James
All of the comments here are so spot on about the Government-led initiatives being so poorly structured … engaging totally incorrect people.. on a doomed to failure basis.
Now that you have raised the issue again and drawn such pertinent comments … … are we (everyone here) actually going to DO something this time around to try and alter the situation ?
PC
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Peter – You make the most pertinent point of all.
As I write this series, I find myself constantly wondering (often out loud) whether the effort of writing, researching, seeking feedback will produce any tangible positive outcomes – particularly with respect to the proposed R&D Tax Incentive reforms. Information is one thing but this blog series, while still in its infancy, requires some element of action to be truly effective.
On this point, I’m stumped. Any ideas?
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Nikolai
January 29th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
How about an online petition of some sort that if you can get enough signatures on you can then forward on to the relevant govt body and also provide to the press at the same time)? At some point surely the govt has to listen to the voters or risk a dishonourable discharge. Thankfully the opposition now appear to have got their act together so the next election isn’t the foregone conclusion it used to be.
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Chris
January 29th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
While I agree with a few of the comments made here, to be honest you all sound like a bunch of whingers.
I mean what about the guy that says, that he goes on line to see if he qualifies and since he doesn’t have any money of his own, finds he doesn’t.
I have been involved in companies that have exported. I have been involved in companies that have been successful, and companies that I have had to close down (particularly during the tec wreck). The companies that I have been involved in have variously had EMDG grants, Comet grants, and frankly anything that was on offer that we were entitled to claim for.
One company that I was a co-founder of and was a recipient of a Comet grant is still not cash flow positive, but would absolutely not have survived without the Comet funds.
I have recently worked on a commercialization strategy for one of the ARC’s in Australia, and am hopeful that some of the basic research that they are doing, which is absolutely at the bleeding edge, will be able to transition into the marketplace.
But it is not easy to change the culture of academia and turn make it commercial. And it is not necessarily advisable either.
From what I have read of the literature that has been released by the minister, I would conclude that there is a real sense of design in terms of the architecting of Commercialization Australia. And I think that is helpful.
The focus appears (when taken into account with Ken Henry’s announcements) to be about using the funds that are available to address several key areas of innovation – (1) Clean Technology, (2) Health issues that relate to aging, (3) Water.
These three issues are really big picture stuff and are going to drive the real economy over the next 10-50 years. So I think it is really good that the government wants to play favourites. You have to pick winners, and there is no question that in the past that the grants programs have tended to favour either companies that already have significant clout in terms of their balance sheets, and don’t really need largesse from the government or fly by night companies where the entrepreneurialism is perhaps stronger than the technology… But that’s life too.
As things stand the CI plan enables researchers in universities to apply for grants to build commercial prototypes. This is a really good thing to do in my opinion. It means that researchers will have to apply their thinking to matters that are real world commercial issues and try to figure how to get over the most critical roadblock to getting funding from VC’s and high net worth individuals when you are dealing with a new piece of technology – a working prototype.
Sure there are going to be people who miss out. Sure the government is going to make mistakes. But people, this is moving in the right direction… If you don’t qualify because you don’t have the ability to raise cash from family and friends to get started, that is actually a problem that you have personally, not a problem that the government should attempt to solve.
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James Tuckerman Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Hi Chris – I’m not convinced.
In the next few days, I’ll be posting a long piece on why I think Australia is NOT a nation of innovators (no doubt, it will offend). This piece is a pre-curser to an overview of the R&D tax incentive reforms (another long piece, unfortunately).
There are a few points that I’ll be making again and again, themes that I believe we should never overlook. The most important…
“Innovation is not the R&D you do, it’s what you do with the R&D.”
Sure, there will always be folks who get funding that don’t deserve and there will always be deserving folks who miss out.
But I’m not convinced that a Research side focus (particularly at the expense of Development) is the way to go.
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Chris Reply:
January 29th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
James
But I did not argue a research side focus at the expense of dev.
I think that you make some good points, but clearly you want to stir the possum, which is good too…
Its actually quite easy to create the rhetoric. What is hard is to shift a culture. And to do it requires that there is a willingness to change in the first instance.
I think that this government is actually trying to do some things that will work. I guess I am more of an optimist than you are, albeit an opportunistic one!
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James Tuckerman Reply:
February 1st, 2010 at 7:41 pm
I ardently agree with what you say about moving from rhetoric to culture changes. I posted the second piece today.
http://anthillonline.com/can-australia-really-claim-to-be-a-nation-of-innovators/
It’s long-winded and not my finest but one of the core arguments is that the Australian people (and, therefore, governments) will continue to find it difficult to change while we are having such a good run with our minerals.
Opportunistic optimists! Australia needs more of ‘em. But on this point, might it be time to prepare for a rainy day?
Excuse me for now, I see a possum…
Peter J Cooper
February 1st, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Keep up the great work James. This is a crucial issue for our nation and it just doesn’t get enough attention like this. Thanks.
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Jeff Swingler
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:56 am
Agree with all the views above!
Given the intellectual, entrepreneurial and pragmatic nature of the Anthill family, it is of no surprise that all the comments reflect the academic findings recently published by Ian Marsh (Australian Innovation Research Centre, Uni of Tasmania) and Lindy Edwards of ANU in the December 09 edition of the Australian Journal of Public Administration.
For those interested – this paper looks at the Dilemma’s of Policy Innovation in the Public sector – and an overview of the history and politicking behind the various R&D / Innovation platforms that have been put forward since the 90’s – and why the government bureaucracies have failed at the strategy level, thereby impinging on the delivery.
In precis with a comment on The Innovation Summit – “The Summit represented an elaborate process of search and engagement that sanctioned an outcome that was, in most respects, largely predetermined. Its outreach and deliberations served the political purpose of mobilising industry and media attention and communicating the governments commitment. But there is no evidence that it exercised any substantive influence on policy development.”
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michaeliharris01
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:33 pm
If the government marketplace expand and have more transparency, we wouldn’t be asking this question.
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Ray Hardy
February 5th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Guys, I was just sent this youtube link to a hilarious spoof of Hitler launching Australia’s Innovation Policy. Hits it on the head perfectly ! Have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5qZ29VKqnk
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John Brennan
May 28th, 2010 at 8:18 am
As an inventor with a patented eco friendly power saving sign system see http://www.rotosign.com and distributors waiting in six countries to evaluate production samples and with commercialisation only $25,000 and we are out of money and nothing to martgage and Eu patent examination expenses biting I curse the day I invented this thing people give a “WOW COOL” to. I have long realised i should have done this elsewhere like the U.S. Bummer!
Appointment today with restaurant owner using one of our signs says he is interested in investing- How many carrots can I dangle?
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