December 2009
Vol. 27
As 2009 draws to a close, the Australian Business Foundation as always is focused on looking beyond the next quarter and the issues dominating the day, to the opportunities on the horizon for business and Australia.
From the Global Financial Crisis to the current climate change conference in Copenhagen, it is important to look beyond the doomsayers. The winners will be the businesses and nations that can use the crises to find new opportunities that create both social and economic benefits for all Australians.
The Foundation welcomes your ideas and thoughts on the unchartered opportunities for businesses and Australia.
As we move towards a low-carbon economy, the test is how effective Australia can be in developing new innovative business models and solutions to solve these intractable problems facing not only Australia but the world. The call for action is here and through crisis, there is opportunity to galvanise our strengths, trial new business ideas, collaborate and create the skills and capabilities that make our businesses truly firms of the 21st Century.
We hope you will join us in 2010 as we continue to research issues that look beyond the mainstream, and discern the productive new opportunities for businesses and Australia.
Clint McGilvray
Manager External Relations
Australian Business Foundation
If you would like to find out how you can get more involved in the Foundation, please don’t hesitate to contact me clint.mcgilvray@abfoundation.com.au
Quick Links
- Key to unlocking the mysteries of innovation
- The Future Revisited: A review of Alternative Futures: Scenarios for Business in Australia to the year 2015
- National Broadband Network - Engineering New Capabilities for Australia
- Management Matters in Australia: just how productive are we?
- New Leadership Models for Modern Success and Sustainability
- Our Sponsors
- The Last Word...
Key to unlocking the mysteries of innovation
Recently the Chairman of the Australian Business Foundation, Stephen Mills wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the Australian Financial Review, entitled, ‘Key to unlocking the mysteries of innovation’.
The article reinforced the Foundation’s position that innovation policy in this nation needs to go beyond 20th Century policy that still narrowly constrains innovation to research labs and more investment in R&D.
Australia urgently needs to shift its innovation policy to focus on customers and markets, helping firms respond with better business offerings in response to what customers actually want to buy.
What’s needed are more innovative firms: capable of adapting existing knowledge, responding to changing customer needs in a global marketplace, and themselves providing the lead for the next innovation research agenda.
We need to heed the example of nations such as the UK who have invested in a collaborative National Innovation Research Centre, to carry out deeper research into the innovation process itself and ensuring this research is better integrated into the broader innovation system.
To read the opinion piece in full:http://www.abfoundation.com.au/research_knowledge/latest_thinking/2
The Future Revisited: A review of Alternative Futures: Scenarios for Business in Australia to the year 2015
At the edge of the millennium in 1999, the Australian Business Foundation pioneered a scenario planning study, Alternative Futures: Scenarios for Business in Australia to the year 2015. The fruit of two years work, this future scenarios analysis produced different plausible pictures of the future, involving a host of business, academic and community leaders including the now Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd who was involved then as one of “tomorrow’s political leaders”!
In 2009, the Australian Business Foundation reappraised its 1999 scenarios of the future and published The Future Revisited, principally authored by eminent futurist and company director, Susan Oliver.
In examining the original 1999 study, there were many aspects in which this study’s anticipation of the future was accurate and in which the challenges and changes for business and government have played out as we imagined in the past ten years.
Playing out in more than one of the 1999 scenarios is the trajectory of globalisation. All of the scenarios understood the impact of the economic development of China, but underestimated just how significant the effects would be on growth in key Australian industries.
The scenarios assumed a leading role for government policies in determining Australia’s economic future, particularly government imposed regulatory conditions.
Our scenarios emphasised the fundamental shift in competitiveness driven by the online revolution to the social networking phenomenon we see today.
But we underplayed the more subtle forms of innovation that come from the smart application of knowledge, however a consistent theme in all of our scenarios is the potential of Australian individuals and companies to compete and succeed in many different and innovative ways by transforming the way they do business in an intensively competitive and globalised knowledge-based economy.
In putting together The Future Revisited, five themes were developed as a snapshot to 2020. These are:
- Energy and resources conscious 21st century
- Changing global economic geography
- Changing patterns of work and demand for skilled peopl
- Unleashing innovation as a prescription for prosperity
- An outward looking Australia
Recently, the Foundation hosted a forum led by Susan Oliver with forward thinking business leaders and commentators to unpack these ideas and make sense of some of the future issues and needs of our nation to 2020. The findings and the report of this event will soon be made public on our website.
In the meantime, please feel free to read more on The Futures Revisited http://www.abfoundation.com.au/research_knowledge/research/193
To read the Foundation’s original study Alternative Futures: Scenarios for Business in Australia to the year 2015 http://www.abfoundation.com.au/research_knowledge/research/6
National Broadband Network - Engineering New Capabilities for Australia
Recently the Foundation co-hosted a Forum in conjunction with the UTS Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology and Industry Advisory Network (IAN) on the National Broadband Network.
The forum aimed to unpack the issues, to better understand that the NBN represents something more than just faster internet.
As this is the largest infrastructure project in our history, with investment totalling five times that of any other nation in the world, the forum delved into the critical skills needed to support this project, and that skills and applications developed around the NBN can be transferred and capitalised on in the future.
The skills section of the forum fleshed out ideas not only the skills needed to build the broadband network, but how we can be 'smarter' at skilling our workforce, e.g. by providing multiple qualifications that allow workers to perfom other functions and that there is opportunity for these workers to transfer these skills to other industries beyond the construction.
The forum explored the issues surrounding new business models, new collaborative approaches and using the technology in new and ingenious ways. It advanced ideas around how it can transform our workplaces – and the need to think about innovation in a non-linear way. It’s not just about moving from discovery to the market place; it’s about all the things that happen in between.
From a business perspective, the forum looked at management and leadership in our organisations for this new wave of new technology and how we need to ensure that we have the right people and resources to maximise the business benefits.
The forum commenced with an opening address by Foundation Director and NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, Professor Mary O’Kane and involved a panel discussion with leading experts across broadband, technology, skills, education and business.
The Foundation wants to broaden this discussion and invites you to have your say in a forthcoming online forum called Beyond Broadband- more details later. To read the report from the forum:
Management Matters in Australia: just how productive are we?
There is a strong positive relationship between good management practices and firm productivity according to a report commissioned by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research which benchmarks management practices in Australian manufacturing firms against the global best.
Conducted by the University of Technology Sydney, Macquarie Graduate School of Management and the Society of Knowledge Economics, the findings suggest that while some of our firms are as good as any in the world, we still have a substantial ‘tail’ of firms that are mediocre, especially in their approach to people management. This is a key differentiating factor between Australia and better performing, more innovative countries.
The research also found that Australian firms were relatively good at performance and operations management, while less effective at people management. It was identified that better management is strongly associated with improved labour productivity, sales growth, profitability, exports and return on capital. To read this report in full:
http://www.innovation.gov.au/General/Corporate/Documents/CACHE_DUVIE=0b04ffc472cbcec489c8d199bb0ad038/ManagementMattersinAustraliaReport.pdf
New Leadership Models for Modern Success and Sustainability
The businesses that are keeping ahead of the curve, in terms of market changes and customer needs, are the businesses that are also the most progressive, socially responsible human communities, according to a three year investigation recently completed by Harvard Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.
The author of ‘Supercorp’, where she highlights her findings, Professor Kanter conducted her study with more than 350 interviews with key people at major companies around the globe. It emphasises when values derive decisions and people are empowered, and when their company seeks innovation with a wider social good- everything can come together.
The Foundation’s CEO Narelle Kennedy recently had the opportunity to participate in a working seminar with Professor Kanter in Sydney.For more information on Professor Kanter’s work: http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=6486
Our Sponsors
The Australian Business Foundation is principally sponsored by its founder, the NSW Business Chamber, and supported by corporate members Deloitte Australia; IBM Australia; Standards Australia; Telstra; the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research; the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations; the Department of State and Regional Development (NSW); and the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (Victoria).
The Last Word...
If you or your organisation is working on a product, service, research project or event that furthers new thinking on Australia's business competitiveness, innovative capacity and opportunities from a knowledge-based economy, please contact us and we will spread the word! If you have comments, questions, suggestions, please contact us:
Australian Business Foundation
Locked Bag 938
North Sydney NSW 2060
Ph: (02) 9458 7016
Fax: (02) 9929 0193
clint.mcgilvray@abfoundation.com.au
www.abfoundation.com.au
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