ATSE PRIORITY

Our industrial competitiveness depends significantly on our ability to translate investments in research and development into economic benefits, and to lift productivity through the uptake of new technology and technical innovations, including the efficient capture of new innovations from overseas.

Collaboration between Australia’s research workforce and the industry sector underpins innovation in our economy, and will be critical to supporting the growth of new businesses and streams of economic productivity. Australia has a world-class research base, and we must take advantage of the significant opportunities to translate publicly-funded research outputs into economic benefits.

The Academy has identified four key areas that must be addressed if Australia is to maximise the contribution of technology, innovation and productivity in industry:

• Translating research: Taking full advantage of Australia’s world-class research and realising the full innovation dividend for the economy requires significant improvements in the translation of research. Many systematic and cultural barriers exist, as well as market failures that can be profitably addressed by government action.
• Incentives to innovate: Incentivising and facilitating businesses, particularly SMEs, to efficiently adopt new technologies can further lift innovation, productivity growth and competitiveness.
• Local and international collaboration: Improving collaboration in Australia, between businesses and between business and publicly-funded research organisations, will significantly enhance innovation. International collaboration is also critically important. Both domestic and international collaboration improves the productivity and competitiveness of Australian technology-based firms.
• Technology adoption: Technological innovation is key to building industry competitiveness, through increasing productivity and reducing costs, realising commercial opportunities from research investment, and creating new areas of competitive advantage.