Like everyone else, Charlie Day is worried about what job opportunities lie ahead for his children, who leave school in 2030.
Unlike everyone else, Day is in a position to do something about it. The new chief executive of Innovation and Science Australia is charting a strategy for how Australia can build a robust and effective innovation system by 2030.
Day is one of a growing number of commentators who lament the sluggish response to the need for corporate innovation.
An ISA review of the innovation system, due to be released this month, found that Australia’s performance was mixed. Mining, biotech and medical devices showed “encouraging signs of strength” and an innovation system that was working quite well.
In other sectors, we need to lift our game.
“Our business sector is doing a lot of ‘new to the firm innovation’ rather than ‘new to the market innovation’, which is incremental innovation rather than big-step innovation,” says Day.
Part of his job is to look at the policy mix to get “new ideas, bigger leaps of innovation” to be adopted by business. “Our knowledge research system is very strong but the translation of ideas into business is an area we need to work on.”
Part of the problem is the lack of capability, which stretches from workers up the management hierarchy. The skills shortfall exists at all levels from vocational skills and training up to management skills, “and the way we manage risk and the introduction of new ideas into the workplace”, says Day.
“We have to lift our game about how we educate people about the process of participating in and managing innovation.”
Relaxed and comfortable
The education system isn’t teaching the disciplines required to drive innovation and there’s still a misconception about what innovation is, Day says. “There may be a perception there that it’s about the genius having the individual breakthrough, rather than the systematic application and iteration and bouncing back from inevitable failure.”
Day headed the University of Melbourne’s successful Carlton Connect innovation precinct for 15 years, to connect business with researchers.
“One of my strengths is [finding the ways] to connect different stakeholders and getting them to learn from each other and build on what each other is doing.”
He says that many fear Australia lacks the impetus for innovation because we’ve been such a long time without a recession and have become “relaxed and comfortable”.
“There is a little bit of truth in that but the business leaders I speak to look at what’s happening in international sectors. [They] are aware that if they don’t create their own future it will get created for them.
“Whilst I’m conscious we don’t have a burning platform, I think there’s still a momentum. We need to acknowledge the uncertainty about what the future’s going to look like.
“I’ve got young kids going through the school system and I’m thinking about what sort of skills they’re going to need when they leave school, which interestingly will be about 2030. I share a lot of people’s thinking [on] what is the future going to hold for us.
“On the flip side, solving challenges and dealing with making our community and our society work a bit better does tend to create jobs. It’s natural to have a level of apprehension about how technology might change the future [but] I also think there are some big opportunities there.”
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