Eureka innovation leadership prize winner Professor Mark Dodgson will launch his 2007 innovation summits in Brisbane with discussion of innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises on Monday, September 3.
Professor Dodgson, of the UQ Business School, was awarded the ATSE Clunies Ross Eureka Prize for Innovation Leadership on August 21.
He ran a highly influential series of innovation summits in 2006 to mobilise policy makers and business leaders to advance the innovation debate in Australia.
Professor Dodgson said the Eureka Prize acknowledged the importance of innovation to Australia’s future.
“I believe it’s crucial to our international competitiveness that we continue to focus on innovation and how to stimulate and support it through appropriate policy and business initiatives,” he said.
Monday’s summit will focus on innovation in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It features Professor Alan Hughes, the Margaret Thatcher Professor of Enterprise Studies at Cambridge University in the UK.
Professor Dodgson said SMEs were responsible for a significant proportion of business activity throughout Australia, both as innovators in their own right and as partners and service providers to other innovative firms.
“The role of SMEs is often overlooked with much of the attention – particularly from government – focusing on high-tech start-ups,” he said.
“This summit will address the public policy and management challenges of innovation in SMEs and question our definitions and understanding of entrepreneurship.
“We will also examine the role innovative SMEs might play in the globalised innovation systems of the future.”
Professor Dodgson said a special issue of the respected academic journal Innovation: management, policy, and practice focusing on the role of the CSIRO and its place in the innovation system would also be launched at the event.
“The guest editor of the issue, Professor Jane Marceau, will be at Monday’s summit,” he said.
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