The Australian Innovation Community

The Australian Innovation Community's web-based networking resource AussieInnovation.com has been established in order to facilitate information sharing, collaboration and positive debate amongst Australian innovators from all sectors of the economy.

We hope that the service can play a valuable role in the redevelopment of Innovation policy in this country.

Who created AussieInnovation.com?

The primary driver behind The Australian Innovation Community is digital infrastructure consultancy Binary Culture Pty Ltd. Since its inception, it has received strong support, contributions and in-kind sponsorship from a broad range of innovators and innovative businesses. Once the service becomes self-sustaining, the Community will be relaunched as a not-for-profit organisation.

How did it come about?

Binary Culture's CEO Robert Spencer is a Western Australian innovator who has launched a specialty retail store, two national magazines, a digital media company and an international game studio which now has offices in Australia, South America, China and the USA. Following the Stakeholder Consultation Sessions for the Review of the National Innovation System in March 2008, Spencer decided to rally the innovation community for a unified approach to the Review — and ran into a serious problem.

The relevant communities were highly segregated, composed of closed business networks, university clubs, small inventors forums and subsections of general business discussion forums. Information services like Grant Search, business.gov.au and Australian IP existed but they offered no place for the exchange of ideas or networking.

After informal discussions with others who attended the sessions and his contacts within the innovation system he soon realised that others shared his frustration, and that there was a real need for a central Australian Innovation Community. Binary Culture's "Digital Media Core" infrastructure product—which can be used as a framework for rapidly deploying website architecture—provided an obvious technical solution, and in a few short weeks the AussieInnovation.com service was launched.

With the National Innovation System Review as a catalyst AussieInnovation.com has grown rapidly, and Binary Culture has used the opportunity to extend and develop the DMC's social networking functionality. With its high quality community-contributed content and sophisticated technical backbone, the service now provides the kind of networking and collaboration resource that the Australian Innovation Community needs to grow and thrive.

The AussieInnovation.com team:

• Robert Spencer
• Timothy Best
• Brendan Ragan
• Jeremy Byrne