Introducing the newest start up nation – Australia / Hong Kong Radio 3
$1.1 billion is a significant line in the sand with which to announce that government sanctioned innovation is coming to Australia and Malcolm Turnbull in his Innovation Statement said the words that I’ve waited so long for – Australia is open for business now and in the future.
Comments including our future prosperity will come from above the ground, not below it and a century of ideas are jingoistic, but perhaps they’re the catch phrases we need to begin to shift from a short-term risk averse society to a medium term risk taking society.
The practicalities of 20% tax offsets for investment in early stage investments, capital gains tax exemptions, $520 million for the Australian Synchrotron, $294 million for the Square Kilometre Array, changes to bankruptcy laws, increase emphasis on STEM education and CSIRO becoming the central link of a $200 million fund are all welcome and of course there could be more, but it’s a great start.
It takes an entire ecosystem to raise a start-up and what’s needed now is for the for ideas to flow, for rhetoric to turn into action and for start-ups to start up.
I’d love to see us go a step further and make this new landscape bipartisan, to enshrine direction, funding and bureaucracy in an untouchable bubble that ensures that future Prime Ministers and political parties can’t adversely alter our course, giving the same certainty to Australian start-ups that their Israeli start-up brethren have through an independent apolitical department ensuring 6 year of consistent funding, direction and regulations.
This is a significant first step, but its true importance is not in the funding, it is in the framing.
It establishes a future direction for Australia, one that given what we know of who we are as a nation and what we are capable of and with what we understand tomorrow may require from us and provide to us, seems like a path worth taking.
So now it’s up to us.
Let’s see how quickly and effectively we can grow our start-up nation. Let’s try to avoid the misuse of funding that inevitably results from these schemes.
Let’s challenge ourselves to take this message to the schools and start the innovation conversation early.
Let’s go the universities and cheer on those already running this race.
Let’s visit the garages and lounge rooms of budding entrepreneurs to discover the next big idea and let’s evolve the average Aussie to think bigger and bolder and champion those that do.
All this and more were part of my chat this week with Phil Whelan of Hong Kong radio 3, so have a listen now (14 mins 02 secs) and then add your voice to the discussion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What signals were pointing to Australia’s emergence as a serious start-up ecosystem in 2015-2016?
The signals pointing to Australia’s start-up emergence in 2015-2016 included: the Turnbull government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda, which represented the first serious federal policy commitment to innovation as an economic strategy; the growth of co-working spaces and incubators in Melbourne and Sydney to international standard; the emergence of several Australian start-ups at Series B and C funding scale (Atlassian’s 2015 NASDAQ IPO was the most visible signal, demonstrating that Australian technology companies could achieve global scale); and the recognition within the Australian business community that the resources boom’s end required economic diversification toward knowledge-intensive industries. The ‘start-up nation’ framing borrowed from Israel’s experience, which itself raised questions about what was specific to the Israeli context (defence technology, mandatory military service, cultural risk tolerance) and what was genuinely replicable.
Q: What has Australia’s innovation ecosystem actually delivered since 2015, and where do the gaps remain?
Australia’s innovation ecosystem has produced genuine results since 2015: Canva has become one of Australia’s most valuable private companies, demonstrating that globally successful consumer software can be built from Australia; the fintech sector has grown significantly; the cyber security, agricultural technology, and health technology sectors have produced globally competitive companies; and the deep tech ecosystem (quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, space technology) has developed national capability that was absent in 2015. The persistent gaps include: venture capital availability remains constrained relative to US and Israeli markets, particularly at growth stages; the regulatory environment for emerging technology sectors (fintech, health tech, AI) remains cautious compared to competitor markets; and the cultural relationship with failure — the social stigma attached to business failure in Australia is higher than in comparable start-up cultures, which dampens risk-taking at the individual and institutional level.
Q: What does Australia’s start-up trajectory reveal about the relationship between government policy and innovation culture?
The relationship between policy and innovation culture is more complex than either techno-optimists or sceptics acknowledge: policy can create enabling conditions (funding programs, regulatory sandboxes, visa pathways for talent, R&D tax incentives) but cannot manufacture the entrepreneurial culture that makes ecosystems self-sustaining; the most effective government interventions create infrastructure and reduce friction rather than directing outcomes; and the discontinuity of Australian government innovation policy (each administration resets the agenda, programs are launched and discontinued, institutional memory is lost) has been a persistent drag on ecosystem development that the private sector has had to compensate for. Sustained, patient, bipartisan commitment to innovation infrastructure — not ministerial announcements — is what distinguishes the world’s most successful innovation economies.
Q: How can I book Morris Misel for an innovation policy, start-up ecosystem, or economic futures keynote?
Contact the team at morrismisel.com/event-organisers.
$1.1 billion is a significant line in the sand with which to announce that government sanctioned innovation is coming to Australia and Malcolm Turnbull in his Innovation Statement said the words that I’ve waited so long for – Australia is open for business now and in the future. .
When signals like Introducing the newest start up nation Australia / emerge, organisations that engage early have the advantage of choosing their response rather than reacting to events. That gap between those who prepared and those who did not is where competitive positioning is actually made or lost.
The most important question is not whether Introducing the newest start up nation Australia / will matter, but how quickly it will matter in your specific context. Leaders benefit most from mapping the ripple effects early — not just the direct impact but the second and third-order consequences that arrive later and hit harder. That is the practical work of foresight.
