Quick Links
- Green Economy Series: Driving New Business Opportunities: 18 February 2010
- Green Economy Series: De-Carbonising the Australian Economy: March 11 2010
- New Thinking: Professor John Foster on Productivity, Creative Destruction and Innovation Policy.
- Dodgson, Hughes, Foster and Metcalfe take on innovation policy!!
- In the news..
- Our Sponsors
- The Last Word...
February 2010
Vol. 28
This week the Australian Business Foundation hosted Federal Finance and Deregulation Minister Lindsay Tanner for a business lunch on the Drivers of Australia’s Productivity Growth.
The Minster used this opportunity to respond to the latest OECD report card on Australian regulatory reform. The OECD found that strong regulatory frameworks and sound policies helped Australia weather the global crisis better than other OECD countries. However the report also said that Australia must lift productivity levels to return to long term sustained growth.
The Australian Business Foundation welcomes these regulatory reforms as critical to productivity improvement. But regulatory reform is only part of the equation for enhancing long term productivity growth.
Boosting Productivity in the 21st Century
In the 21st century the way to lift productivity is through innovation. Australia’s innovation policies date back to the 1980s and remain largely focused on innovation as science, research and technology. The action that counts is innovation that transforms Australia’s business capabilities, skills and competitiveness.
The Foundation’s study by Cambridge Professor Alan Hughes of Australia’s productivity surge of the 1990s was attributed to the high technology using sectors not the high technology producers. The business transformations and new capabilities behind their productivity gains came from use of enabling technologies like ICT, greater management competencies and capitalising on regulatory reforms.
It is not generally the result of greater capital investment to replace labour. Productivity is not about doing more with less, nor about making people work harder for longer.
It is vital that Australia’s innovation policy is focused on lifting Australia’s declining productivity growth.The Australian Business Foundation is collaborating with our university and international partners to strengthen understandings of how to reshape Australia’s innovation policies to boost productivity.
In this edition of ‘In the Loop’, we highlight new thinking on the relationship between innovation and productivity and on the opportunities presented by the ‘green economy’.
Clint McGilvray
Manager External Relations
Australian Business Foundation
Minister Tanner's speech 'Better Regulation: Driving Productivity and Growth' at the Australian Business Foundation on Monday, 15 February 2010 www.abfoundation.com.au/research_knowledge/latest_thinking/3
Green Economy Series: Driving New Business Opportunities: 18 February 2010
EVENT TOMORROW! REGISTER NOW!
The Foundation is kick starting the year with its events series delving into the widely debated ‘Green Economy’. Our first speaker for this series will be leading business practitioner on sustainability, Nick Palousis. Nick will outline how sustainability practices can generate new value and transform business capabilities.
Nick is a founding partner in the Shaper Group, an Australian firm that helps its clients prosper by using the principles of sustainability as a core business strategy. He is also an adviser to the World Economic Forum’s Driving Sustainable Consumption Project. To find out more and register for this event: http://www.abfoundation.com.au/events/54
Green Economy Series: De-Carbonising the Australian Economy: March 11 2010
Presented by leading international climate change expert, Dr Michael Molitor, this event will highlight how new value and wealth can be created by both businesses and Australia as a nation from de-carbonising our economy. Dr Molitor will present fresh perspectives on how the capital markets can be a profitable solution to the myriad of climate change problems that Governments around the world are failing to solve.
Dr Molitor is the founder of CarbonShift Pty Ltd, and was previously the global leader of ‘climate change services’ at PricewaterhouseCoopers based in London. He is also a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. To find out more and register for this event: http://www.abfoundation.com.au/events/55
New Thinking: Professor John Foster on Productivity, Creative Destruction and Innovation Policy.
The Australian Business Foundation is pleased to provoke debate with the latest contribution to its series of Occasional Papers – Productivity, Creative Destruction and Innovation Policy by John Foster, Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland and President-elect of the International J.A. Schumpeter Society.
Professor Foster’s paper proposes a model of economic growth where entrepreneurship, knowledge, technology and innovation are positioned at its centre, rather than as external peripheral forces. His prescription is for a more dynamic innovation policy aimed at making entrepreneurial activity the hallmark of old and new industries and large and small enterprises.
Professor Foster argues that this is the basis for surviving the forces of creative destruction and positioning Australia for a new long wave of productivity growth and innovation-led prosperity. In the wake of the global economic crisis, and with the long term challenges for services, living standards, infrastructure and cities presented by Australia’s aging population, the need to lift Australia’s productivity and skills and contribution of our workforce is urgent.
Rather than taking a laissez-faire approach, Professor Foster urges government to act to secure productivity gains by creating the environment that allows entrepreneurial behaviour in firms to flourish. Read Professor Foster's paper
Dodgson, Hughes, Foster and Metcalfe take on innovation policy!!
This latest piece of scholarship from Professor Mark Dodgson, Professor Alan Hughes, Professor John Foster and Professor Stan Metcalfe, all of whom are close associates of the Foundation, argues the case for alternative approaches to innovation policy in Australia.
In this well- argued paper, published jointly by the University of Queensland and the University of Cambridge, UK, these authors argue that innovation policies are too uniform, static and have disproportionate focus on science and technology at the expense of innovation driven by the demands of markets and customers.
The authors reject conventional 'market failure’ justifications for government action on innovation as too limited and out of touch with the body of evidence on how innovation works in reality to drive economic growth. Their alternative is that innovation policy needs to be designed on ‘systems thinking’ – recognising the complex evolutionary character of the economic system and the variety of actors and institutions at play.
This paper illustrates its argument with Australia as its case study. read this paper
In the news..
It is great to see more current debate in the media on innovation-led productivity. Some of the articles below from friends of the Foundation are well crafted angles on issues around innovation, productivity, management and collaboration..
'Management key to growth', Roy Green and Renu Agarwal, The Australian, January 27, 2010
If we are to lift national productivity, the key is working not harder, but smarter. Professor Roy Green and Dr Renu Agarwal from UTS highlight the continued gap between our understanding of the vital link between productivity, better management practices and the importance of education and training.
'From creation to innovation', by Tony Golsby-Smith, The Australian, 27 January 2010
Tony Golsby-Smith calls for Australian management to build a capacity for design thinking that does not exist now. This article outlines the opportunity for Australian education to encourage creativity and for managers to be skilled in leading innovation not just implementing it.
EU blueprint to lead world in innovation', by Professor Mark Dodgson, The Australian, 3 February, 2010
Professor Dodgson argues that Australia needs to learn from the EU about successful collaborative research models, essential if Australia is to innovate sufficiently to reap future productivity benefits.
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; NSW Industry and Investment (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
