Ministers for the Department of Industry, Science,
Energy and Resources

Hacking the policy process (Articles)

Assistant Minister for Innovation, the Hon. Wyatt Roy MP, in conjunction with the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, and the startup accelerator Blue Chilli held the inagural innovation policy ‘policy hack’ in Sydney on Saturday 10 October .

Information on the hack can be found at  http://innovation.govspace.gov.au/2015/10/19/hacking-the-policy-process/

 

We can repeat Israel's innovation miracle (Articles)

Twenty years ago, Israel's biggest export was oranges.

The tiny nation's size and economy could hardly have foretold its transformation into one of the most entrepreneurial lands on Earth.

"Nobody could imagine (the change in) this place… including the people who were doing high-tech here," Saul Singer told our recent Australian trade mission in Jerusalem.

"They had to convince people that this is something that we do. It didn't seem like a normal thing."

Singer is the celebrated journalist who co-authored Start-Up Nation – the best-selling story of Israel's economic miracle.

During his address, the parallels he drew between Israel and today's Australia were stark and, I've got to say, incredibly exciting.

"I think Australia can be a regional and maybe even a global innovation leader," he said. "You have this opportunity now. This actually is the moment. It's up for grabs."

It may surprise that start-up investment rates (if not the volume of capital raised) between our two nations are reasonably similar: 34 per cent of Israeli start-ups are funded against 25 per cent in Australia.

On another metric, 40 per cent of Israeli founders have a postgraduate qualification while 41 percent of Australian founders are postgraduates.

However, a keen point of divergence is the threshold for failure. Forty per cent of Israeli founders have experienced three or more previous start-ups. In Australia, just 9 per cent of founders have the same tried-and-failed history.

In Israel there is a relaxed acceptance that start-up failure is normal and shouldn't be spurned.

In Australia, we too must tap those dynamic elements of our national psyche and character – such as our anti-authoritarian streak – to drive us forward as an innovation leader.

Governments should be the exemplar here. Just as they have done in Israel, we must be prepared to experiment with public policy, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset not only to spawning and supporting high-growth new businesses but across the business of government.

We must embrace a new political environment where government has the freedom to try things. This also means, as the Prime Minister stated at the Economic and Social Outlook Conference, that if a policy is not working we're unafraid to "chuck it out".

The other critical constituent in any innovation ecosystem is investment.

At $400 per capita, a huge amount of VC funding fuels diverse businesses in Israeli technology.

Despite the enormous reserves of capital ploughed into traditional industries such as resources, property and infrastructure in Australia, we're coming off a much lower investment quotient in relation to innovative companies.

And yet we are beginning to see significant change, with three Australian venture capital funds each raising $200 million this year.

Israel has impressive collaborative links between higher education, research and the private sector. In Australia, we must develop this nexus and grow our talent pool, particularly around STEM and digital-tech skills.

When global entrepreneurs are thinking about where to live, the lifestyle that comes with surfing in the morning and coding in the afternoon needs to be milked for all it's worth.

Published in The Australian Financial Review, 18 November 2015

Hacking into challenges we face to create a more innovative nation (Articles)

Let's face it, sometimes the approach to policy in the past has been to call meetings in secret rooms, where nobody outside those walls knows what's said, let alone the outcome of what's said.

But the wealth of our country's knowledge does not reside solely in Canberra. It's important that as the government works to embrace the future, we bring with us the vast pool of talent already pushing new frontiers.

That means all elements of our innovation spectrum - from the startup community to science, higher education, research and the ICT multinationals, as well as traditional segments such as resources and finance - incorporating innovation in their existing structure.

If we can lay the groundwork to link this cutting-edge sector with our elected parliamentary representatives - and the public service - we have a strong launching point for a national discussion around innovation and its corollary of economic opportunity.

That's what we'll be attempting to achieve with the government's all-day policy "hackathon" at startup incubator BlueChilli in Sydney tomorrow.

It's the beginning of a vital conversation for our country, predicated on disrupting traditional processes.

It makes perfect sense to pack out a space like BlueChilli with some of Australia's best problemsolvers and most creative thinkers.

For Policy Hack, we'll be adopting the successful "hackathon" methodology from the global startup community where people from different backgrounds converge, form teams and set about solving a problem or challenge by creating a new business, product or service.

The only difference is that instead of producing, for example, a new app, our teams - featuring business people, venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, scientists, academics and other influential thinkers - will be probing the challenges and opportunities we face in creating a more innovative and entrepreneurial Australia.

The building blocks for these discussions will come from ideas crowdsourced on a purpose-built web page.

Hundreds have contributed in the lead-up to the event, with the top initiatives voted on by another 5000-plus Australians.

Our "hack" will conclude with the teams pitching new innovation policy suggestions aimed squarely at national economic growth.

On the broad themes, we'll be looking at how we change a riskaverse culture; how we lure more investment capital to Australian innovation; how we grow our talent pool and attract the best and brightest from around the globe; and how we achieve greater cooperation between higher education, science, research and the private sector on the commercialisation of our great ideas.

I could not imagine a more open or transparent consultation - and dare I say it, nor could the across-government departmental officials who will act as mentors to the teams as they develop their policy proposals.

And yet I cannot emphasise enough that the most successful aspect of a typical "hackathon" is not the actual outcome.

It's not the new business or product raised.

It's the educational experience that permeates every single participant. It's the networks and connections made.

In other words, Policy Hack's measure of success will not be merely the ideas promoted, important as they are.

The real yardstick will be the degree to which relationships are forged between our entrepreneurs, innovators, educators, scientists, researchers - and public servants.

Many of the participants would just not normally engage with government - they are not industry bodies with big government relations divisions.

Malcolm Turnbull has said governments should not fear adopting and adapting in the vein of our innovators. If our Policy Hack model for engagement works - and we take away some solid lessons from our first experiment - this is something we can do more of.

Indeed, our primary hope is for an exceptionally open dialogue to put us in good stead for the next round of discussions.

Surely it's a good thing for the Canberra public service to be spending time talking directly with our nation's innovators, entrepreneurs and science and research experts.

What is there to be afraid of?

Published in The Australian, 16 October 2015

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Support to fast-track breakthrough technologies (Media Releases)

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IP puts spotlight on best idea (Media Releases)

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A new online competition – “The best idea in Australia” – seeks to inspire innovators and entrepreneurs to maximise their intellectual property rights, says Assistant Minister for Innovation Wyatt Roy.