Brain drain stifling Australian innovation
For a country of only 23m people Australia has, for many years, been pitching above its weight on the innovation front. From inventing car radios, to the bionic ear, and Wi-Fi, we have a long line of inventors who have come up with novel ways to improve the lives of people around the globe and solve problems with the innovative use of technology.
It is no surprise that Australia has been one of the primary test markets for LinkedIn to introduce and trial new products. In 2012, we tested our endorsements feature before it was launched globally. We also recently tested our new messaging solution before launching it worldwide. The feedback that we have received has been instrumental in helping shape our products to make them even better.
If Australians have such an innovative spirit, why is it that we are falling behind on the innovation front? According to Startup-AUS, Australia still lags behind in startup formation and has one of the lowest rates in the world of venture capital investment for a developed nation. The education, research and financial infrastructure initiatives announced by Hon. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in his Innovation Statement will go a long way to creating a conducive environment for startups. There is still, however, a massive talent drain issue that needs to be addressed.
Information Technology and Services is the top industry where Australian LinkedIn members are employed. In the list below of the 25 hottest skills of 2015 on LinkedIn in Australia, technology skills are most prominent. There has never before been a greater demand for technology skills as ‘traditional’ industries are increasingly being disrupted.
However, the biggest hurdle to a more innovative Australia is that we are simply not creating enough STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) related talent. And much of the world-class talent that we do create is migrating to other countries to seek better opportunities, forcing us to import talent in order to meet domestic demand. As can be seen from the LinkedIn data below there is a growing gap between people entering and leaving Australia with STEM skills. We are losing talent in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Computer Applications. This coupled with the decline in participation in STEM subjects in the school system shows that our talent pipeline is in dire straits. Australia is under-performing internationally compared to STEM-strong countries such as India and China.
There has been increased demand from industry to adopt a national STEM skills strategy to ensure we have a workforce that can meet the demands of future jobs and continue our innovation culture. At LinkedIn, we are using our Economic Graph data to help policy makers and educational institutions around the world to identify and understand skills gaps. They can then develop strategies to meet the current and future needs of their labour market and to drive economic opportunity. The acquisition of Lynda.com was an important step towards making it easy for our members to attain the new skills of the digital economy and the skills they know are in demand.
The recently announced Innovation Statement is a very positive step toward ensuring that we continue to create an innovative culture. The industry, government and education sectors need to work closer together to ensure we have a strong pipeline of technology talent and that we stop the brain drain of top talent leaving Australia.
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I really appreciate you reading my post and if you enjoyed it here are some other articles I have written on LinkedIn:
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Partner and Associate at Socialutely
9 年Thanks for the article, Clifford. As a businessman, I feel one of the problems Australia has is lack of tax incentives to encourage business startups and highly skilled migration. Australia has never really been a country that seizes opportunities during early growth stages of a given sector - such as Information and Communications Technology. We need government and industry to work together more effectively. There is no reason Australia, despite its isolation and small population, could not become a major innovator in research and development with the right policies in place. Obviously, education also needs the best teachers and curriculum. Maths and science should be compulsory subjects to the final stages of school education.
Chairman - Conflict Manager | ArtDirectly | mymobileapp
9 年Good article Cliff. To get the focus on STEM we need to have enough teachers who are well trained. In the interim, we must encourage skilled engineers to come and live in our great country and support what no doubt can be a start-up hub for this part of the world. We must also encourage more centres for entrepreneurs to meet, share and grow the next big global opportunity.
Melbourne Angel Investor Thinker of Different Pragmatist Master of Sarcasm & Cynicism
9 年Clifford Rosenberg Disagree with your comments - please look at the 2 links added below - Kauffman states that Australia leads the World in creativity but unfortunately not entrepreneurship. The other link shows 10 graphs highlighting Australia's issues - note particularly graphs 3 and 10 which show the very low risk tolerance Oz VC's have, and the shocking collaboration record of Oz Research centres. Turnbull has certainly thrown down the gauntlet on the latter, and the IIF funds that the VC's were getting but not investing have been removed. Further to the "perceived STEM shortfall", another recent Kauffman study showed that by far the biggest number of successful entrepreneurs that they surveyed across a large section of recent successful start ups were actually university drop outs, with engineers also highly represented amongst the remaining numbers. Food for thought !!