Following a successful Brisbane event, innovation thinkers will gather in Sydney today to challenge business to make Australia a world innovation leader once again.
Initiated by UQ Business School's Professor Mark Dodgson and consultant Terry Cutler, with Deloitte and BRW, the Innovation Summit is a series of events designed to give business and government a reality check on the state of innovation in Australia.
Professor Dodgson said one of the messages to come out of the Brisbane event was the need to recognise that business practice innovation was at least as important as the science and technology break-throughs popularly associated with the term.
"After all, the top three most innovative industries in the US between 1995 and 2000 were wholesaling, retail, and security and commodity broking - important users, but not developers of technology," he said.
"And although the contribution of universities to intellectual property (IP) start-ups is crucial, it is only a small portion of the innovation needed in a healthy economy."
Professor Alan Hughes of Cambridge University said that in 2004, only 462 academic IP start-ups came out of America's 191 major universities.
"That is out of 500,000 start-ups in the US each year," he said.
Professor Hughes will also speak at the Sydney event today along with Catherine Livingstone, Chair of CSIRO, Gerhard Vorster, Managing Partner of Deloitte Consulting, and Professor Roy Green, Dean of Macquarie Graduate School of Management.
Although both the Brisbane and Sydney events were invitation-only, the final event to be held in the Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday, December 6 is open to all.
Organisers hope to release the resulting "blueprint" for an innovative Australia early in the New Year.
For more information contact Cathy Stacey on (07) 3365 6179 or 0434 074 372.
