Following the National Innovation Policy Forum (NIPF) in November 2025, I had the opportunity to reflect on the event with Jane O’Dwyer from Cooperative Research Australia (CRA) in mid-December.
We started with the raison d’être of the NIPF to increase the linkages between industry, the innovation system and policymakers. To this end, as patrons of NIPF, David Thodey and Catherine Livingstone have been catalysing the thinking over the past few years as the conversations and ambitions of NIPF evolved. The NIPF to date has moved from describing the problems to seeking how government and industry shape innovation policy and looking to ways to improve technology transfer, commercialisation and translation. When we recorded, there was great anticipation that SERD would offer insights in to how the federal government will respond to these opportunities.
John Howard set the scene chairing the first session, noting that a “list of priorities isn’t a market”. He, Elanor Huntington, Jane Fitzpatrick and Marcus Dawe explored policy and industry perspectives in the ‘Turning Missions to Markets’ session. Jane and I spent some time reflecting on the ‘First Of A Kind’ (FOAK) challenges that Marcus introduced to the forum, discussing FOAK anywhere vs FOAK in Australia and the role of government as a first customer. Roy Green chaired a conversation with Linda Scott and Jasmina Joldic on system coordination. We hear from both Linda and Jasmina on the podcast; Linda sharing the concept of an ‘Innovation Accord’ to try to resolve some of the innovation system complexities that have emerged at the government–industry–innovation system interface; Jasmina reflected on the need to declutter and move the focus to outcomes and impact.
The third and final session discussed Innovation as a driver for productivity. Jane and I reflected on the Harrison.ai story and its journey from domestic incubation to offshore commercialisation. Annette Schmiede, Adriano Di Pietro and Cori Stewart joined me on this panel touching on local manufacturing and the role of ‘Original Equipment Manufacturers’ in stimulating demand for innovation. Jane and I further reflected on the challenge of not wanting to constrain organisations growing, yet needing or wanting to find ways to keep these growing companies domiciled in Australia. This is part of the broader ‘domestic demand side problem’ for innovation and we talked of how ‘moving the cheese’ and focusing on major areas (or missions, flagships, BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) or other suitable names) could act as a catalyst to aligning domestic demand with domestic innovation.
We closed the podcast with Jane Fitzpatrick offering what I feel is a compelling summary of why tech transfer matters and the opportunities that investment and partnering with people with these skills present.
Transcript
CB: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tech Transfer Talk for another year. Here we are, you’re listening in 2026. However, we’re recording today in late December. Before we get to our guest today, let’s set the scene a little from the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Senator Tim Ayres, and the Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation, Alex Hawke.
TA: Innovation is fundamental for Australian prosperity, for living standards and national resilience. And that means innovation policy. Its design and its implementation is itself important. But even for those of us who think carefully about these things, innovation can be a relatively grey word. For everyday Australians, it’s a world…it’s a word that tends to conjure up images of black skivvies and white lab coats. When the Turnbull government launched its National Innovation and Science agenda a decade ago, would you believe, it leaned heavily on that conception of innovation, and perhaps a little too heavily on that conception of innovation. What was missing, I think, from that picture, was an understanding of the role that workers, particularly blue collar workers, play in a properly functioning national innovation system. It’s just as important as the risk tolerant, entrepreneurialism of the tech sector, or the amazing life changing work of Australian scientists, vital to lifting productivity and Australian work and industry, is the innovation that happens in every Australian workplace, every day of the week. It’s their talent and their capacity, their experience and their judgement that should not be overlooked in good innovation policy design.
AH: And I’ll start with the famous line here from an Austrian economist, which is something I favor. Joseph Schumpeter, who says the capitalist engine is first and last an engine of innovation. And I raise that today not because I’m going to sell you on capitalism. I wouldn’t attempt to do that today. But the importance of capital is something that I think the government, particularly after an era of Covid and unprecedented government spending worldwide, where government sector spending is replacing private sector spending, is one of the greatest challenges for innovation in our country today. Our challenge, though, for me in Australia is not that we don’t have the passion, the ideas, the good quality researchers and often the people; we do lack capital in motion at the moment.
CB: And joining me today is Jane O’Dwyer from Cooperative Research Australia. And Jane, thank you for joining us.
JO: Thanks, Cameron. It’s fantastic to be back here again to review what happened at the Innovation Policy Forum.
CB: It has been an exceptionally quick 12 months and I guess just to set the scene for our listeners, we’re recording, as I said, in late December, and we are without SERD. And I don’t mean that mathematically for those listening abroad, there’s the Strategic Examination of Research and Development, which the federal Department of Industry has commissioned. And as we understand it, as we sit here today, the minister is reflecting on that document, as I have it.
JO: Yeah, it’s an independent review of our whole R&D system. So, we’re all really looking forward to seeing what the government’s response is to it. And I think we could see in the language around the development of NIPF was having some influence in there, some of the issues identified. So, it’s a really interesting time for us to have held it this year. And of course, everyone who participated will be looking forward to the outcomes of it.
CB: I think there is some anticipation.
JO: We’re all waiting for both the response to the SERD and what the reform appetite is.
CB: The stocks of brave pills in the Minister’s office is yet to be determined. I think it’s fair to say, and whether and whether there will be a run on whatever stock is at hand.
JO: Absolutely.
CB: So, you did make the point, and I think quite reasonably that NIPF may have had a little bit of an influence over what’s unfolding with SERD and the signals that we’ve heard. It might be worth recapping how we got to the National Innovation Policy Forum number four.
JO: Yeah, yeah, it’s very exciting to get to number four, actually. So, I mean, we kicked off the National Innovation Policy Forum in November 2022 with our first forum up at Parliament House. It was on the same day as the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science, which again it was this year . And originally we kicked off with our patron, David Thodey. And Catherine Livingstone came on board the following year as a co-patron. And we’re really lucky to have such significant Australian leaders who’ve been significant business leaders, but also through their careers, have been leaders across research and education and across government, which goes to a bit of the heart of what the idea of the Innovation Policy Forum has always been. So, we established it in 2022 because we wanted a forum that brought together the elements of the innovation system with policy makers in partnership with policy makers. We’ll often see forums where researchers and or research organisations will talk about what they need, and other forums where businesses will talk about what they need. We historically bring together boundary spanning organisations, so cooperative research centres, and so they would get together to talk about what they need, and then everybody would go and talk at government. What you didn’t have was a dialogue between government, business research organisations and the boundary spanners and the translators that actually make R&D stick and happen. So, the ambition was to actually bring together these groups. We kicked off the first one in partnership with the Department of Education, which has a large part of the government’s research budget in IT and Department of Industry, Science and Resources, which obviously has a big role in the innovation system. And we deliberately curated it to bring together these groups and to make sure that the conversation flows and that we get an outcome out of it. The idea of it always was that it wouldn’t simply be a conference where people talk at each other; it would be one where we have short, sharp, very provocative panels. And you chaired one of those, so this year’s NIPF, Cameron, that were aimed at stimulating discussion on tables. And so we have tables, discussions that are scribed. And then we analysed those scribed table discussions to look for the common themes, the common interests and the common landings. And each table is very deliberately made up-a little like a wedding-you don’t get to choose where you sit. So, instead of…
CB: Ah, is that what happened?
JO: Yes, you don’t get to choose to sit with all your mates who might share exactly the same views as you and have the same experiences view. We deliberately mix up the tables so that there will always be a mixture of business, government, boundary spanners on each table. Which means you get really interesting outcomes from those discussions. And we’ve seen over this time a sort of arc where the first year really sounded like when we all first started talking about the strategic examination of R&D. Everybody knows what the problems are, and we talked a lot about what the problems are, and we didn’t talk so much about what the solutions might be. The government, what low hanging fruit government could take. And then it sort of started narrowing in. So, in the second year, we really started narrowing in on the key things and key actions that government could take. And they started to lean around some very obvious themes, which also came out in the third year, around we’ve got a fragmented system. Government needs to see itself as a leader and a setter for our innovation system, that innovation, R&D and innovation. So, the full lifecycle of it all is not a nice add on. It’s not a sort of drain on the federal budget. It is a major investment in our economy and it’s central to our economy. It needs to be seen as central to economic policy. The government has a role to play, not just as the policy shaper but as an innovation participant. It needs to be innovative itself. It needs to demonstrate innovation. But it also needs to support those companies that very often we’ve created in Australia, through its procurement policy. So, it needs to have a higher degree of risk tolerance in order to do that. And then the other one that came out through those first couple of forums was this real need for Australia to focus on scaling what we call the ‘missing middle’. Really putting the effort in to support our companies to grow. And there’s been other things that have come out through it around R&D, RDTI reform, etc. But really, those key themes came out very strongly in the second and the third NIPF. And they’re exactly what we saw in the strategic examination of R&D discussion papers and in much of the discussion.
CB: Yeah. No thanks, Jane. That’s a terrific recap of four years in about four minutes, so thank you. The interesting points out of all of that, is that yes, coming into this year’s forum, it was more around, no longer describing the problem, but actually starting to seek the solution. The patient is ill. We now need to put the appropriate treatment system in place to get the patient firing on all cylinders. I think, though, there was an interesting comment that you made very early on there, and it was a key preposition where you made the point that it was about talking at government. And indeed ,this is about talking with government. And it was funny, I was talking to a former colleague of mine from CSIRO this week who kind of ran the place for a while, and he made the point to me that that was a fundamental change in thinking that took place that he observed, which was moving from talking ‘at’ the talking ‘with’.
JO: Yes.
CB: And when you talk ‘with’ and build relationships and start to build that shared view of the world, then things like SERD and things like those influences start to percolate through the thinking. And the Innovation Policy Forum is indeed, created a forum pun quite intended there to actually allow the conversation with to take place.
JO: Yeah, and look, to be fair as well. I mean, government, particularly in the early years of the NIPF, some of the people in government who’ve been very involved in the SERD are ones who helped shape the NIPF, shaped the questions we asked, shaped the questions we put to the audience, because clearly they were seeking this dialogue. And I think it’s a really important thing for us to do. And I think it really is important that we, as a community, we have to work with government if we want to get the outcomes that we want. And it’s good to see that government have been willing to work with us on dialogue.
CB: I think that is the case. So we set sail. And you mentioned earlier David and Catherine as the co- patrons of NIPF. And we were lucky enough to have them in the prequel, which we launched in late October of ‘25, just the week before. I got the sense a lot of people listened to it, which was great because some of the things that we said in the prequel podcast found their way on to the conversation on the day, which was great. And I think the one that struck me the most was Catherine’s comment that innovation is not an option; it’s an imperative.
JO: Yes.
CB: And that really captured the ‘why NIPF mattered’ and sort of, the driver for an NIPF4, which was, it’s an imperative. And we were somewhat, well, I’ll speak for myself here- heaven forbid-I was dumbfounded earlier in ‘25 when there was an Economic Productivity Roundtable conversation where innovation was excluded from the conversation. We’d sort of set the alarm bells off for a few folks. Catherine Livingston made a great observation in the NIPF prequel episode.
CL: Innovation really matters now more than ever in terms of prosperity. It’s not an optional accessory.
CB: So, I think Catherine framing it as not an option. It’s an imperative. It was particularly helpful.
JO: Yeah. And look, I think she’s been such a champion in this space for so much of her career and brings so much experience. And she’s absolutely correct. And I think one of the themes that’s run through the NIPF since she’s been involved and sits very close to all of us working in this space, is that Australia can’t look forward to the luxury we’ve had not to do anything. For a long time we’ve sort of coasted along because our economy is well supported by resources sector, primary industries, exports, etc. But we can’t simply sit here expecting that to continue. It means we’re reliant on being price takers. And so, her urgency in this time, I thought, was very telling. And I think it’s clear to all of us, the longer we leave this, the bigger the problem we’ll have.
CB: Indeed. And I did get that sense of urgency from both Catherine and David in the prequel, and I think the ‘how’ is almost self-evident in that it’s around collaboration and getting things done in execution. But there was an interesting turn of phrase that came out in the prequel around experimentation, which is that risk-taking piece, which is, I contend, largely lacking in government and, to some extent, in industry.
JO: Yeah, it’s a cultural thing. It’s come out in a couple, in the NIPF a couple of times and, of course, came back out again this year. This issue we have around risk. It was a really big theme last year, that we’ve sort of built risk aversion into our system, without meaning to but we have we’ve got risk aversion at a political level and a policy level. But we have it at a business level too. When we look at boards around the country, what drives them? Risk is what drives…
CB: Risk or the aversion of, and the proactive ones, minimise or manage.
JO: And probably the space where you have the highest risk tolerance is in the research sector. But we haven’t carried it across our economy. And, I think, there’s pretty strong agreement that we need to have a better appetite for risk and a greater tolerance of, rather than seeing it as failure, seeing it as that we’ve got to experiment, we’ve got to fail things fast, we’ve got to be brave if we want to really grab the prize. Incremental change won’t get us where we want to go.
CB: No, incrementalism won’t. But I just want to go back to something you said there around the research community. And I want to draw a distinction, if I might, between the research community’s appetite for experimentation at the bench, in contrast to the research management and corporate part of research, which perhaps has not much of a different appetite for risk than government and industry.
JO: Yeah, I think to a degree that is true. I mean, it’s also research is a very highly regulated part of our economy. So, I think there is a, you’re right there in that, I guess, I’d contend that the level of regulation over research institutions slash with an increasing corporate governance. It’s more like corporate governance for greenies means that you do see that risk frame taking a stronger and stronger piece in that thinking of those institutions.
CB: Just to draw that distinction between what happens at the bench and what happens in the management and governance. So, I think how we have to do it is relatively clear, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a revelation. But the challenge is how to make the cultural shifts to enable it. And pointing to how all that gets rolled up into a national prosperity narrative, which is beyond economic rent, and ensuring that everyone is prosperous, not just a small proportion of the Australian community.
JO: Yeah, exactly. And I think Catherine’s made that point in a number of interviews with you previously, too. The reality is that innovation is what will support a society that offers, that is able to maintain the standard of living that we expect in Australia for everybody. And we’ve not been good at the narrative. And I think that the minister, to some degree, in his speech at the NIPF made that point, that when you say ‘innovation’, most Australians don’t relate that to their own wellbeing, be it in education or be it in access to living in a well-off society that when all the opportunities that provides for them.
CB: Yeah, indeed. So the cause célèbre as we enter 2026 seems to be ‘missions’.
JO: I’m not sure we’re going to be using the language ‘missions’. I detect that it might be priorities or…
CB: Priorities? We could call them…we used to call them ‘flagships’ at CSIRO twenty years ago. And then they moved to ‘missions’ and they were actually called Big Hairy Audacious Goals before they were ‘flagships’. I guess we can call them what we like, but there’s some big targets that are going to be, to which we’re going to try and steer the ship.
JO: Yeah, exactly. Government’s made it very clear. Well, at least the independent panel and its recommendations to government, as we understand them, is making it very clear that government needs to take a leadership role in deciding where we’re going to, where we’re going to play big, where we’re going to make that, take the risks and invest. We’ve seen government moving towards that, I guess in more recent times, you know, the National Reconstruction Fund and the Future Made in Australia. This, I think, will take it a whole other level.
CB: An interesting counterpoint to that was what John Howard said in the first session.
JH: The list of priorities is not a market, and a strategy paper is not a scalable company.
CB: So whilst we can, and the government and society generally can articulate it’s aspirational around these particular targets, we actually need markets and organisations to take up innovation in order to get us to some of these lofty goals.
JO: Yeah. I think you’re right. And I thought what was really interesting about that discussion that John, who all of us in this podcast know is a legend, that John chaired, what I thought was really interesting, is there’s a kind of overarching theme out of it was this sort of sense that there is a disconnect, a fundamental disconnect in Australia between this idea of setting these national, big, hairy priorities, whatever we’re going to call them…
CB: Big, big, hairy, audacious goals.
JO: Exactly. And creating these scalable investable markets and and somewhere we need to match very good market intelligence and willingness to, to sort of look over the horizon with where we invest. And then I guess, it’ll probably, it’ll go then to the speed that we support the scaling of companies, because we can miss the boat by being really slow.
CB: We can, we can. And there’s a delicate balance, of course, between the real Goldilocks effect, if you like, you know, being too early, being too late, or being just right. And that, of course, is where governments step in in early market formation, where there aren’t private sector actors or other actors to take innovation forward. But that, whilst complicated, that’s that Goldilocks thing that we’re all trying to land.
JO: Yeah, I think so. Well, there’s two things that come to mind. We know that the SERD report is going to talk about government as an exemplar. So, what will be really interesting is how it sees that role. And Marcus Dawe in this panel, of course, raised the idea and the importance of this, really thinking about how we fund and support ‘First of a Kind’. He was so articulate at expressing what the opportunity potentially is for us there. The risk is very high with ‘first of a kind’, of course.
CB: It is.
JO: Kind of carving out new markets.
CB: It’s very interesting the conversation around government as a first customer. And if government is a first customer, it can notionally support the ‘first of a kind facility’ because it can underwrite it. This is a conversation that’s unfolding in the low carbon liquid fuel space at the moment.
JO: Yeah.
CB: The government has a reasonably notable demand for liquid fuels because, you know, you’ve got to get an Air Force and a Navy to run, kind of important. So, are they that potential supporter of a ‘first of a kind’. And then, we should unpack that a little bit further. But what do we mean by ‘first of a kind’. Because it might be ‘First of a Kind ‘in Australia versus ‘First of a Kind’ in the world. And sometimes we get those two things a little confused.
JO:Yeah. I think you’re right. We do sometimes though. I mean, it’s kind of interesting because I think often through the narrative around government’s role in innovation and even the SERD, we’re slightly, not completely, but slightly blind to the international aspects of it. But we have an economy that is highly internationalised and very big participants in the global economy. And I think a lot of our companies start from that outset that they see the world as as their market. But we’ve got to make sure there isn’t a disconnect with government understanding that as well. So, we’ll be looking out in the search to see if that international and global markets piece is going to get a guernsey.
CB: Well it’s an interesting conundrum, I think, and we haven’t spoken about Annette Schmeide’s contribution, but she gave the Harrison.ai story, and there’s a company that was thinking globally couldn’t get traction locally, so just went global. And there’s many an example, but particularly in AG where you commercialise offshore to bring it back in onshore, because the market allows you to get scale to cover the upfront costs of getting something to market. So, there is that spin through or commercialise through another market to get it back here. And that’s a subtlety that may or may not get picked up in these conversations.
JO: Yeah. Look, I’ve been having really interesting discussions this last week. We’ve been talking to industry participants in the CRC program, and that issue comes up quite a lot because we’re only speaking to companies and a lot of them that are growing quite rapidly. And that issue of the, reality is a lot of capital for them is offshore. But Australia hasn’t really put some of the levers we could put in place that mean we’ve got to maintain some, you might maintain headquarters or some employment here. And government putting some of those levers around Australian companies can actually be helpful for them in the conversations they’re having with funders overseas. And some countries do that. So, it’s kind of an interesting space. But we do have a habit of letting things fly away.
CB: We do. Although Catherine Livingston did make the point that they are flying away because those markets don’t exist here. We don’t want to constrain companies with some artificial tether. So, there’s obviously subtleties in these conversations.
JO: Yeah, there really are. I mean, you’re absolutely right. And Catherine’s right. And I mean, this is where we always hark on the Cochlear story. But it is a kind of interesting one because they’re a global company. They’ve headquarters here and they have a fairly large R&D operation here, but they don’t only operate here. The market isn’t entirely here.
CB: Yeah. And it’s interesting, as you say, there are many examples that have flown offshore and made their way forward. Cochlear’s one. We had Alan Finkel talking about his journey a couple of years back now, talking about his journey to California, which got him going. So, so, no there are examples out there. But I think the other piece of this puzzle is an opportunity but may be part of the reason for the phenomenon we see is that we have fragmented systems with innovation systems, which don’t create, if you like, a center of gravity around which you can hold an organisation in place. If there’s no center of gravity, then of course it’s easy to dissociate and fly off into other markets, I think.
JO: Yeah. And look, I think this goes to some of Roy Green’s commentary around the need for us to think about place-based innovation and innovation ecosystems thoughtfully.
CB: I think Roy Green and Linda Scott also had something to say on this.
RG: And I’d like to ask Linda about this, because the theme here is coordination. And what would you like to see if you had your way as a coordinating focus for this system? Very fragmented programs, but some very substantial ones across government departments. So, we have a whole-of- government view, both at the national level but also locally, because there’s a lot of discussion as well. And my colleague, John Howard, has just published a book on this, on place-based innovation ecosystems and how we bring together research institutions, industry, government resources at the local level, as happens in other countries, the Fraunhofer system, the UK catapults, the Manufacturing USA institutes, to ensure that we get a focused view in areas of competitive capability at the local level within the context of a nationally coordinated system. So, I just wonder what your comments are.
LS: What a great question. I mean, I think if you look to, as you rightly point to, professor, other you know, nations who are really kicking it out of the park with respect to innovation, it’s easy to see the large capital investments and sort of compare ourselves unfavourably. And I think we’ve done that a lot in Australia. And it’s pretty unfortunate because just to be controversial for a moment with the deepest of respect. My personal view is that the amount of capital available in Australia is not the rate limiting system. The rate limiting system is the coordination, and the rate limiting system is the investable propositions for the private market. That means that government investment needs to be focused in a way to get propositions to be investable. I’ve heard a lot of people say to me, and I get a lot of LinkedIn messages from people saying, ‘Here’s my’, you know,’ slide deck. Would you like to invest in my new innovation?’ I mean, sometimes I do feel like writing back to people and saying, ‘Would you invest your retirement in your own’, you know, ‘or company?’ Probably the answer would be ‘no’. So always, you know, think about yourself when you’re thinking about what we’re trying to do in superannuation. Would you want your own superannuation invested in these places? Well, that’s the fundamental consideration that we need to consider that differs with age. It differs with cohort. It differs with workforce. It differs depending on who you are. But nevertheless, that is the kind of proposition we need to invest in.
JO: I mean, we talk about it, but and we’ve had various attempts at it, but the reality is we do need to think as a country how we do this well, and we need to think about it not necessarily just as each state doing its own thing because we just Vegemite things even more.
CB: Yes. That famous quote from Katherine Foley about Vegemiting.
JO: Yes, exactly. But we do need to think about how we create these ecosystems that bring a supply chain together, bring talent together, bring the capacity for companies to grow in scale and researchers to move through them, etc. it’s really important. And we can see some of this developing in Australia. But I think government being quite deliberate about it is important.
CB: I would completely agree that there needs to be a deliberate set of steps taken to drive the creation and sustaining of ecosystems. I think governments of all persuasions all around the world have to, a greater or lesser extent run on announcables, and we need to actually announce it and stick with it for a while. And actually, that, heaven forbid, might mean deselect some things. So, it might not be that we can have biotech everywhere or AI everywhere, or quantum like fill in your particular technology set. It may require us to actually make some place-based decisions about where we’re going to focus our efforts.
JO: Which is challenging, and I think that’s why everyone’s keen to give government that responsibility.
CB:Yes, yes, self deselection is not a natural state of being, I think, that’s an everywhere problem,
JO: It is an everywhere problem.
CB: Yeah, it is, but I think that coordination piece and driving that, building that centre of gravity was a theme that came through right through the three sessions. I think that that was a consistent theme. Yeah.
JO: And in fact, I was interested in the government panel comments around there because I thought, and I know she was very, very new into her role. And she wasn’t really speaking on behalf of the Department of Education. But she did make a really interesting comment, I thought that goes to some of that challenge.
CB: Let’s hear from Jasmina Joldic now and her thoughts on the day.
JJ: But my observations are based on a number of, well, 18 years of being in a public service. It is a complex system, and we use complexity as an excuse or complexity to build more complexity. Yyou know, to justify what we’re doing or to justify a process that we’ve created that we feel really attached to. My challenge has been to look at that and say, ‘How do we declutter a really complex system and focus not on the process’, but focus on the outcome and the impact that we’re having, and not creating millions of recommendations that we are going to tick a box and implement. But actually being really succinct in saying, what is our mission? What is our vision, what do we want to create, and how do we get there in a coordinated way? Cabinet cannot be the, the, the kind of the coordination mechanism for a public service. It has to happen at every single level. We work in silos. And again, just remember the caveats. It’s not just the reflection of the APS. It’s a reflection of years of experience in the public service. We create silos. We work at an agency level. So, how do we how do we modernise the public administration component of of our system that we work in. So, where is the innovation in the public service, where we become much more coordinated in driving an outcome, driving an impact, having an impact.
JO: And this sort of view, not necessarily of the department she’s working for, that government often will build complexity as a bit of an excuse.
CB:I thought it was a wonderful comment.
JO: Yeah. And it was. And I mean, it’s not a deliberate excuse. It’s just, it’s just what government does so. ‘Well, this is very hard to do. And this is all the levers we have to pull. And this is the risk we have to manage’. But the reality of making these hard decisions is you actually have to bust some of the complexity; you need to simplify.
CB: I got the sense when that comment was made, certainly at my table was, ‘Oh my goodness, she said it out loud’.
JO: Yeah, yeah, it was really amazing. I thought she was very impressive and very thoughtful. And then that kind of, in that same discussion you had Linda Scott, kind of, with this idea of an innovation accord, sort of when we’ve done it before, which is a kind of nice thing, because you’re actually, I mean, the thing about accord is it does actually try to cut through the complexity and give people some ownership over cutting through that complexity to come to an agreement. What are the minimums we can all agree on? What are the things that we all like to stick to? But let’s get to the things we can agree on. I thought it was a really interesting discussion.
CB: Let’s hear from Linda Scott.
LS: IISA (Industry Innovation and Science Australia) has historically spoken about the levers for change to improve our innovation system, really across the four P’s – policy, programs, procurement, and people. And since joining the board, one of the things that we’ve been talking a lot more about in the context of the third review, is a further concept of an innovation accord. In a former life I had the privilege of representing local governments on the national cabinet under the current Prime Minister and the former prime minister, and sat through the process of watching the Housing Accord go through the National Cabinet, all three levels of government signing up to one of the world’s most wicked problems, trying to get the creation of more housing and more affordable housing here in Australia, and using an accord through the National Cabinet to align the priorities of all the levels of government.
CB: And I thought the innovation accord was a terrific idea to try and get the state and federal governments to start aligning on some stuff. I thought the other thing, just going back to the comments around complexity from Jasmina, I think the complexity is the behaviour or the tell on risk avoidance, because if we layer it up with complexity, we can sort of, we know that we’ll be okay. And I remember moving to Canberra in 2005, in fact, 20 years ago this month, as we record, and I quickly formed the view that in Canberra, the process is the outcome.
JO: Yeah, I think I mean, I think that it’s something that’s evolved over recent decades. So, I came to Canberra a good ten years before you, and I think there has been, and it’s well documented by no-one less than David Thode actually…
CB: Okay.
JO: Service review that what we’ve seen over a period of time is a shift from what I think we see in the Westminster system as a traditional role of the public services, providing advice to ministers and providing advice, whether or not that is exactly what the minister wants.
CB: The Frank and Fearless concept.
JO: Frank and Fearless, to the role of the public service, morphing to more of a program management, program implementation role, which by its nature has risk aversion built into it.
CB: It does.
JO: And you’ve seen many of our mechanisms for holding government to account, which it needs to be held to account, but holding government to account have taken greater precedence. So, I mean, as a young political advisor, I wrote questions for estimates committee, and nobody took as much interest in them then as they do now. And I think you’ve seen these things evolve over time, and you’ve seen our political landscape evolve over time. And so, that has an impact on the policy landscape. And so, I think it was a really interesting one, because I think you’re right. The complexity is a defence against risk.
CB: And the accord may be a way to start to, I’ll say break down those defences, because if we set up a set of rules that we can run to, that might open the door, maybe just slightly, to exploring new ways of doing the innovation policy and the way that we build these ecosystems and draw, coming back to that, that gravitational pull idea of creating that gravity to hold industry in place in a certain geography, whatever geography we’re talking about. Ccertainly, a very interesting conversation in the government policy piece, there’s something actually that was used, I think it was by Linda Scott, and it was a comment that then was also used by Catherine Livingston in the prequel, which was the idea of investable propositions.
JO: Yeah.
CB: And I think that ties heavily back to the missions or BHAGs or whatever we’re calling them today. But that notion of investable proposition is an industry meets government moment.
JO: Yeah, yeah.
CB: And it also, I think, ties back to this idea of the ‘at’ versus the ‘with’. Investable propositions are almost by their very nature I think, to be successful, are a ‘with’ conversation. ‘How do we work with government’ in contrast to ‘here’s my proposition funded’.
JO: Yeah ,yeah. No, that’s absolutely true. I think it’s actually, it’s a fundamental cultural change idea. There was some conversation I think that was quite important that sort of ran through the table discussions, we picked up in the table discussions, was this kind of idea of shifting our thinking from seeing government as a grant-making body, sends out grants, and you go off and do whatever you want with grants, to actually seeing it as a as a shaper and a, and a driver of innovation. And I thought that was a really interesting thing that came out through multiple table discussions.
CB: Yeah.
JO: And that goes to that question about, you know, investable propositions, goes to our culture. I mean, needing to evolve our culture.
CB: Yeah. The analogue of that is government is a market forming force. And particularly it takes us back to that ‘first of a kind ‘concept.
JO: Yeah, exactly.
CB: So, I think the government policy and coordination piece, this notion of the innovation accord, that’s probably something we carry into NIPF5.
JO: NIPF5, yes.
CB: Not that we’re planning for that today. So, the third and final session of the forum was the nexus between productivity and innovation, which I sort of teed off on at the start, Jane, which was a real head scratcher for me. And it was very interesting, in that session, I thought around ‘Why? are we having this loss of economic complexity? Where is the manufacturing going? Where is the high value stuff going?’ And it doesn’t seem to be sticking around in Australia.
JO: Yeah. And it’s kind of an interesting one, a bit of a thing that Annette Schmeide went to and the thing that we don’t actually have a supply problem. Like we’ve got the smarts, we’ve got the ideas, we’ve got the potential. We have a bit of a demand problem.
CB: Demand side problem.
JO:Yeah, exactly. But we haven’t quite figured out how to deal with that or how to resolve it or how to smooth it. And I think it’s a gnarly problem for us. But it does go to, I think, some of the deliberate choices that government makes.
CB: Yes.
JO: And I think that came out quite clearly that the government needs to recognise that gap exists and where government needs to step in has got to be where the gaps exist.
CB: Yes.
JO: We don’t need government to step in where things are going really well. It needs to keep doing what it’s doing in some of those. You know, if we’re churning out great ideas and great potential things, we don’t need to do a lot more in that space. It does really need to think very clearly about how it’s going to address where the gaps are, and perhaps how it’s going to incentivise potentially private sector actors too, to address that gap.
CB: And I think that’s really interesting about the government’s role in incentivising the broader concept of ‘moving one’s cheese’, right. So, if the government moves the money, the market will follow. That is certainly my observation over many years. And you’ve got Future Made in Australia. You’ve got the National Reconstruction Fund. They are mechanisms through which you can move investment priorities and draw the private capital towards. And there’s no doubt that’s, I think what their, their premise is.
JO: Yeah.
CB: But I guess it comes down to so what’s our mission and where are we choosing to focus. And then can we line up the innovation system around it? I think the Minister, Senator Tim Ayres, had something to say on that subject.
TA: But sometimes the investment and the effort driving Australian research are not sufficiently joined up to make the most of our current advantages and to lead to future capabilities in our long- term national interest. For example, Australia has made significant investments in battery technology over the course of the last decade. We have a wealth of lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt and manganese beneath the ground, as well as deep expertise in mining and manufacturing processes across the economy. But public and private investment have not always been coordinated to provide the best support for new production processes, the right linkages between processing and production capability, and the right commercialisation opportunities. Australia should be a global leader in battery supply chains, from minerals to manufacturing, and manufacturing to recycling today.
CB: And on the theme of manufacturing, Adriano Di Pietro shared some thoughts on Australian manufacturing.
ADP: So, making it here is really the driver for translation. If we aren’t making it, we don’t know the smarts, we don’t understand the nuance. Homologation, all of the documentation, getting things into hands of users, where we see impact. And so, you know, where is, where are we missing translation in the Australian market? You know, I would say we’ve done a very good job of offshoring the smarts. And I’ll come back to it. That’s because we don’t make it here. And so, my background, obviously manufacturing industry, of course, you can hear it already. But you know, that is something that if you don’t have OEMs domestically based in Australia driving demand. And I think the first panel, we heard a bit about the, although it was sort of strangely posed, but the ‘mission to market’ piece, you’ve got to have a market and to have a market, you need to have OEMs and you need to have them here in the country.
CB: Yeah, and just to clarify an OEM, for everyone, Original Equipment Manufacturer. No, that’s all right, just, just to get, we’re in a city full of TLAs. So, important to just get that one cleared up.
JO: That’s going to be the challenge, right?
CB: I mean, the great thing is, I think, Jane, is there are some really obvious places to focus. There’s health, as a general outcome that everyone has a vested interest in. There’s housing, in which everyone has a vested interest in, and there is energy in which everyone has a vested interest in. And then you could even say nutrition, which you could see is related to health or a subset of health. But in principle, if you’ve got health and somewhere to live and energy, you’re pretty much getting on the right track. And that creates lots of opportunities.
JO: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I mean, it goes back to some of the things Minister Ayres said around what Australians associate with innovation and and in fact, well-conceived and targeted areas of priority help break down that barrier.
CB: They do.
JO: I think if people really understand, their health is always the easiest one for people to understand.
CB: Absolutely. And I would put it to you, that housing’s probably not that far behind it.
JO: I think housing’s pretty high up there, particularly for younger generations, for whom…
CB: Absolutely. There’s almost a perfect alignment of political interest as much as there is economic and social interest around that. So, it becomes a great lightning rod for innovation and for doing things. So, I think to that extent there’s some, perhaps some higher or some more obvious self-selecting areas, but all will be revealed. And it’s this balance between outcomes and enablers, because, of course, there’s lots of talk about quantum and biotech and these things, but they aren’t inherently markets in and of themselves. They’re enabling tools that allow you to form up new markets, whether it’s new computing power or new crops or new medicines, whatever happens to be.
JO: Yeah. And look, I thought what was kind of interesting in that last panel too, was some of the enablers going offshore and then what the impact that has on our, our system and on the ecosystems that we talked about. And I think that that was something that came out both from, well, it came from Cori Stewart and Annette Schmeide, and I think, also from Adriano Di Pietro.
CB: I think all three of them.
JO: All three of them were on a strong agreement that we’ve, we’ve seen often in major government investments. This is where government can really move the dial. Big, big investments, for its own uses. It sends things off overseas to overseas tech giants. And it’s a risk issue. They’re often managing risk. But actually what that is doing is it’s sort of takes capacity out of our system.
CB: It does.
JO: And that enabling part for our system.
CB: It diminishes both capability and capacity at the same time.
JO: It does. It does. And I thought they made that quite strongly that, you know, they’re all pretty clear., we’ve got the talent and the capability, we need to make sure that we’re feeding it.
CB: Yes absolutely. So, Jane, as we set off into 2026, just a quick question. As we conclude, the regional forums are going to play out again in over the first few months of 2026, will you get out to each of the capital cities and continue this conversation?. Is that still the plan?
JO: We’ll be planning to be out in the states. It may not be in the first quarter, just depending on the strategic examination of it.
CB: No, fair point.
JO: I think we want to make sure we’re adding value for everyone who participates. The state-based forums were just great, and it was really great to get out to the states and have lots of people, particularly those from business, participate. So, it’s really important out there again in 2026. So, keep an eye out for it. Anyone who’s interested should subscribe to our newsletter.
CB: Yes, they should.
JO: CooperativeResearchAustralia.org.au and subscribe because then when we see the SERD come out and we announce those dates, you’ll make sure you get an invitation to them.
CB: So, I think that’s really important. I think that timing makes sense, Jane, that there’s no point doing this until the SERD is released. We can make some sense of it and then have conversations, particularly with industry, who are the primary target of those capital city-based events.
JO: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Jane, it has been great to take a chance to revisit the National Innovation Policy Forum from ‘25, and I think there’s a lot of good stuff to talk about through the year ahead. All the very best for 2026. And as someone who works a lot with you, it’s always terrific to have you on the show and looking forward to more of that next year.
JO: Thanks, Cameron, and we are looking forward to lots more of your fantastic podcast, which I know everyone who subscribes to the newsletter loves getting and reading. So, thanks for all of your work in this space as well.
CB: Thank you. A pleasure. Thanks so much, Jane. And as something a little different, I thought I’d leave you with some comments made by Jane Fitzpatrick at the National Innovation Policy Forum, which I think caught the essence of why technology transfer is such an important piece of the puzzle. And, as she observes, so often overlooked as part of the journey of commercialisation.
JF: What are the barriers to people who, once they’ve invented a widget, the widget works. They’ve got a prototype. Great. What is the barrier between that and the market? Well, it is not a barrier; it’s a gulf. They can’t get from one to B to from A to B. We are expecting scientists and engineers who can build one brilliantly, invent all this stuff, to build a company. There are two different skill sets, and all the training in the world is not going to turn as scientists or an engineer who doesn’t have that capacity to be a company builder. We’ve got to do better in being able to put, wrap around the skills and the capabilities around that invention, around that scientist, to ensure that they can build a company. That means we, if you train them to do a financial model, that doesn’t make them a company builder, right. We’ve got to be able to bring in the expertise that are actually going to do that. And I think that there is a clear role for tech transfer company. tech transfer offices in this country to turn into company incubators. Taking the IP, helping the scientists to develop that IP by wrapping around these business services around them, turning them into company generators. Because we all know that we can all invent great things, but if nobody wants to buy it, it’s not a great thing; it’s a nice idea. So, you’ve got to be able to get them from that place to a place where somebody, as we’ve, as it was so eloquently said, capital is going to pour into it, right. And we do need to get it to the place where it’s attractive for capital. Capital does not want to put it into the very start of an innovation process, because they’re going to lose money, right? They’re not completely risk averse, but they want to see a pathway to money. And if you can’t give it to them, they’re going to walk away. So, we’ve got to find a way of getting IP to a place where somebody can see a pathway to return on investment.