Corporate Australia meets Start Up Australia at "David meets Goliath" event

It was Great to represent "Goliath" at the German Australia Chamber of Commerce & Industry "David meets Goliath" event held at the "Advance Queensland" headquarters in Brisbane last week. Thank you to Richard Schoenemann from Sunverge for representing "David", Minister Leeanne Enoch for attending, Professor Michael Rosemann for coordinating the event and to AHK Board Members Heidi Krebs and Kristian Wolf for also attending. A special thanks also to Ron Pennekamp, Sabina Langenhan and Tea Dietterich for also assisting in the creation and coordination of the event, as well as to Queensland's newly appointed Chief Entrepreneur, and "Shark", on #SharkTankAU Steve Baxter for his contribution.

Siemens was a "Start-Up" 170 years ago so it was great to be able to provide a bit of historical context behind where the company had started and its commitment to excellence in innovation, engineering and economic development in the 200 countries that it operates in around the world during my presentation.

Siemens Family Photo - (click on Photo)

The company's presence in Australia is almost as equally impressive, with it recently celebrating its 145th year of operations in Australia, which coincided with a AU$135 million industrial digitalisation software grant that will be used to fully digitalise the Swinburne University of Technology ‘Factory of the Future’. The software will also help develop the workforce of the future in Australia across the entire work lifecycle from apprenticeships to PhD’s, and is inline with one of the Prime Minister’s Industry 4.0 Taskforce recommendations, of which Jeff Connolly, the CEO of Siemens Pacific, is the Chairman.

Siemens History in the Pacific region

One of the main topics that I talked about was Siemens recently established "Next 47" global venture fund that has been designed to invest in entrepreneurs who think big and build companies that will change the way we live and work. The €1 billion fund was created in October 2016, and has already started to entice and invest in dynamic start-ups that challenge the status quo, and add significant value to the way we do things. The relationship is symbiotic at its very core, in that Siemens is able to bring agile and disruptive technologies into its ecosystem and assist significantly in the commercialization process, and start-ups are able to scale globally quicker than they typically would be able to given the fact that Siemens has a presence in over 200 countries globally, and has almost unparalleled R&D experience with the 59,000+ registered patents that it already has in place.

next47:

The sense of a collaborative spirit was palpable during the evenings event and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the interactions that I had with all of the people that I talked to after my presentation and the panel discussion. Its important that events like this take place, as they have the potential to lead to links being made, and problems being solved between individuals and organisations who wouldn't typically have interacted in such an open and collaborative manner.....