Lucky Country and Creativity do not mix? Australia lacks innovation

Have always suspected that necessity (and hardship) is the mother of invention. Aussies are lucky and clever but there is no push to innovate as things are well as they are. Australians are not known to rank highly in global comparisons of innovation and creativity.

Clever country rates poorly as ideas factory, says research

Vince Chadwick January 19, 2012

AUSTRALIA has an image problem when it comes to innovation. 

That's the blunt assessment of studies released by Thomas Edison's old firm, 

General Electric, today.

The GE Global Innovation Barometer ranked Australia's status as an innovation leader 16th from 30 countries. 


Only 2 per cent of 2800 senior executives surveyed worldwide mentioned Australia as an ''innovation champion''.

The US took out top spot with 65 per cent, while Japan was a model of humility: 45 per cent considered it a leading innovator globally, while only 26 per cent did at home. Eighteen per cent of Australian business leaders nominated 
their country.

"There's a disconnect between local reality and international perceptions," GE's Australian vice-president for strategy and growth, Michael Ackland, said.

He cited the 86 per cent of local executives who agreed innovation is the main lever for a more competitive economy, though 92 per cent did so globally.

Another study commissioned by GE from the Milken Institute, an independent think tank, found Australia leads the world in five of seven innovation indicators such as university-industry collaboration and research and development spending. However, the Innovation Barometer says only 28 per cent of Australian executives said research and development corresponded to their definition of innovation. Globally the figure was 41 per cent.

Before 2008, the Milken study found most research spending in Australia came from business. ''With our spending at 2.2 per cent of GDP, Australia still comes in below the OECD average, but it is rapidly closing the gap,'' the study found.

Thirty-one per cent of Australian executives felt the innovation environment had not improved in the past five years, while 66 per cent said government support for innovation was not well organised. This is despite the federal government's 2009 white paper Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for the 21st Century.

The dean of the University of Technology Sydney business school, Professor Roy Green, said the government's research and development rebate was having some effect but the commodity boom was breeding complacency.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/clever-country-rates-poorly-as-ideas-factory-says-research-20120118-1q6kx.html


What have Australians invented so far? Some are just first in implementing or using, not necessarily the first to conceive the idea.

http://www.questacon.edu.au/indepth/clever/

http://www.questacon.edu.au/indepth/clever/100_years_of_innovations.html