Innovatia

The elements of innovation (the who, what and how) For many years, innovation has been identified mainly as research and development, or R&D.

metamorphosis, with a wider definition than R&D. This, too, is very prospective.Here’s to our inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs, includ- ing Australia’s growing list of Nobel Laureates. We can’t have enough of them, so let’s give them what they need to succeed and flourish. They not only improve our lives; they do Australia proud. This has led to complacency: there have been no meaningful reforms for more than 10 years, and we have also suffered from largely vision- less and populist politics over that time, as has much of the West. When examining industry performance, how- ever, it’s worrying that only seven of our 19 indus- try divisions bettered the productivity average of 1.6% p.a. over the 10 years to June 2019. While these seven industries – headed by the Information Media and Telecommunications industry, and including the Health Care and Social Assistance industry – performed extraor- dinarily well, the rest returned averages ranging from ordinary to awful, as shown in the below chart. We clearly need to adopt world’s best practice and get serious about innovation. So, just what does “innovation” include?

VIDEO EXTRA

HTTPS://YOU- TU.BE/9T- FE8YYA4NK?SI=LE1VF- M4386XDWDUQ

Australia’s federal government regarded R&D as the main source of innovation when, a few years after the Industrial Age began to be diluted by the Infotronics Age in the mid-1960s, it established the Industrial Research and Development Grants Act 1967. The 1960s had yielded the highest GDP growth since Federation in 1901. This was boosted by a societal demand to make up for the lost opportu- nities (so to speak) of the previous 60 years, during which Australia and society at large had endured two depressions, a lot of recessions, two World Wars and the Korean War. Competition was growing on both a domestic and global scale; in response, the federal government introduced the aforemen- tioned legislation to encourage more R&D among Australian companies, who had long been protected by high tariff barriers and approaching consumer saturation of traditional goods.

The 2023 Australian Intellectual Report provides a rich account of how the IP system can trib- ute to creating a skilled, diverse, and productive economy,” says Michael Falk, the Chief Econ- omist of IP Australia. Watch this video to find out more about the major changes of the state of our economy.

INNOVATIA

176

INNOVATIA

| Entrepreneurship

177