The Australian Innovation Community

One of the catalysts for the creation of this Australian Innovation Community was the Review of the National Innovation System. We helped gather (and workshop) submissions as well as discussing the issues they raised. Several months on, the submissions have been read and the preliminary findings compiled.

One of our founding members, Jeremy Byrne, was on hand at this year’s InnoFuture conference to see Terry Cutler speak about the green paper the day after its launch, and Byrne has since delved into the story behind the story.

His analysis can be found below. Welcome to The Wake of the Venturous…

• Part one: Context
• Part two: Recommendations
• Part three: Implications

The findings of the National Innovation System Review have just come to us hot off the presses. They can be found here: at the Government's innovation website.

They come in two flavours: the full 228-page paper, Venturous Australia: Building Strength in Innovation, and the 38-page overview.

It is very difficult for me to describe this development without using hyperbole; we created this website to encourage innovation in Australia and this new section represents a great deal of that. While elsewhere on the site we are still learning what infrastructure is needed and how to best encourage interaction, right here John Barker and his collaborators are doing it all.

We have posted Larry Quick’s paper “Creating 21st Century Capable Innovation Systems: Unleashing Creativity through Open Platform Innovation” on the AussieInnovation wiki.
The fundamental open-source idea and supporting discussion isn’t the only impressive part of this submission; the desire to innovate the whole innovation system and look at the assumptions behind it is also worth a look, and consideration.

In a recent speech at the Melbourne Institute 2008 Economic and Social Outlook Conference, called New Agenda for Prosperity, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr said that, innovation was “the only way a country with first-world wages and living standards can stay in the game.”

Anyone interested in making a submission should definitely have a read through the complete text:

• “ New Agenda for Prosperity“

The speech by Prime Minster Kevin Rudd to the New Agenda for Prosperity Conference, Melbourne University, not only highlighted his Government’s commitment to innovation but outlined in broad strokes its plans for long term economic change. These were centred on the three “P”s: “productivity, workforce participation and population growth.”

You can read the complete speech here:

• “Towards a Productivity Revolution, A new Agenda of Micro-Economic Reform for Australia“

Do you have a brilliant idea that needs a little polish before it is ready to help change Australia? Let us in on the idea; the innovation community can help out with fleshing your idea out or just help you work out the implications. Maybe you will come up with the idea behind the submission that makes everything click.
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