In my career I have had a lot of opportunity to identify and interpret what are the building blocks for success in many diverse economies and markets and particularly in achieving global success in relation to innovation and in its commercialization.
In any country it begins with what we were given in terms of location( in Australia’s case its remoteness) and geography( a highly water stressed, resource rich Australian land environment surrounded by ocean) and topography( size of, distribution and location of the population being respectively small 24m to 40 m by 2050, growing older not younger and nearly all based in just 10 mostly coastal cities).
We are not an India or China and we are not a New Zealand. Australians are a remote, lightly (relatively) populated, largely urbanized, well educated, digitally connected and comparatively well governed population.
That has enabled us to take advantage of four areas of opportunity and expertise that build on our inherent natural resources gift and our intellectual capital.
Many of these sectors have been open to development by other economies but Australian’s were able to take advantage of the rule of law, the establishment of trusted institutions to manage or monitor allocations, activities and/or rights and the principle of fair play. This undoubtedly was also a key factor in attracting foreign direct investment.
But it also required significant leadership events to occur in the first instance – the opening up of Western Australia’s mining sector in concert with Japanese industry barely 20 years after the end of the second world war, the establishment of compulsory superannuation scheme by the Hawke-Keating Government making Australia’s one of the worlds largest pension funds industries , Australian farming ingenuity especially in the management and allocation of national water initiative water solutions and establishment of the worlds best quality framework for vocational training and skilling and first class universities.
The other interesting component for leadership in these four sectors unlike other industries is that they all provide a critical mass market opportunity for local Australian providers and innovators. In nearly every instance we have produced companies in the top quartile of their industries globally and in the case of mining in the top five - this alone has spawned a very powerful and export focused Mining Equipment Technology and Services industry.
Meanwhile our agricultural brand builds significantly off the processes and technology that Australian researchers and innovators have developed around food safety and security.And our financial services sector is leading the world in FinTech and the RegTech associated with these new global economy information age industries with secure distributed ledgers and a cashless economy.So leadership in a country context is taking advantage of what you have been given and how you manage it both through Government policy and incentives combined with commercial innovation and risk.
Australia’s future will lie in continuing to make brave, pivotal decisions based around increasing productivity, safety and security in our core sectors of delivering global energy, water and food security but also knowing how to use our small but highly educated, and digitally connected population to use its intellectual capital to deliver the next generation of products and services coming towards us at hyper speed from markets that didn’t exist 15 years ago!That means we need to continue to engage in the traditional, familiar economy but we also need to be participating in the new global digital economy and building on our highly educated, digitally connected, savvy - but small - population.Managing both simultaneously will require real leadership from both Governments and industry and the upcoming generation of 'born global' Australians.End
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