From innovation to commercialisation: embrace the risk

You could say that innovation is the translation of an idea or invention into a good or a service that creates value. But this is a somewhat dry take on what is in fact a rather thrilling notion.

I’d contest that innovation is actually central to our identity as a species – it’s one of the key elements that makes us human.

Since our earliest ancestors mastered fire and began turning stones into tools, we’ve been looking for ways to disrupt; to improve on nature, and to discover more about ourselves and the universe.

So innovation can and will persist regardless of how our society or legislation or economy or regulatory bodies or funding incentives are organised. But obviously there are some systems and mechanisms more conducive than others to turning it into a commercial advantage.

There’s a commonly-held belief that while Australia performs well in research, this performance is most usually not developed into tangible wealth creation.

South Korea, Israel, Finland, Sweden and Japan are recognised globally as top innovators – through a combination of government support and private enterprise, incentives to commercialise, co-granting arrangements, and the natural incentives formed by success of a few headline companies – like Samsung, or Novartis.

You could argue that by contrast, Australian culture, Australian regulation, and Australia’s risk aversion quashes commercialisation. That the barriers to exploiting the true potential of commercialising technology are too numerous and too high.

Culture is widely recognised as a barrier to commercialisation. Academia is one of the biggest cultivators of new technology but it hasn’t always walked hand in hand with the cultures of venture capital, entrepreneurship and commercial competition. Our broader society’s deeply-held fears of disrupting the job market have also fed into a misplaced mistrust of the word ‘innovation’ – there are those who consider technological revolution to be a threat to ongoing job security. And in fact the Committee for Economic Development of Australia – CEDA – has done extensive modeling showing that almost five million jobs face a high probability of being replaced in the next decade or two.

Regulation is often cited as another big barrier to commercialisation – this is probably just as true for drones as it is for – say – new techniques for genetic manipulation.

The innovation system itself can also be a barrier to commercialising new technology: fragmentation and stop-start funding to both knowledge creation and knowledge translation – and the infrastructure that enables it – have been incredibly well described through a multitude of studies, reports, inquiries and roadmaps over the last few years.

Of course fear is another barrier. Fear of personal financial loss, humiliation and failure are all significant individual barriers to overcome.

It’s tempting to see the opportunities for commercialising technology through the lens of scarcity – what feel like reasonable excuses to not innovate, to not explore how it might be employed to make things faster, better, more accessible, cheaper, or easier.

Tempting to believe there’s not enough support - from the government, from academia, from friends and family. There’s not enough money in the bank account, there aren’t enough investors, there isn’t enough understanding about the potential for this new way of doing things to make a difference. Tempting to believe that things are the way they’re meant to be: that’s just the way it is. That all of these barriers are fixed; they’ll never change.

But what if we instead look at the opportunities to commercialise technology through the lens of prosperity? What if, instead of looking at the barriers, we look at the enablers?

What if we say – from the outset – there IS enough. There’s enough time. There’s enough money (because there is an awful lot of money in the world, even if it isn’t in your bank account.). There’s enough of an enthusiastic community of supporters. That while it might be complex, complex doesn’t mean impossible. The process can be broken down – we can work out the steps to make it happen.

Regulations can be used to our advantage, or changed. Support and finances can be found. Competition creates incentive and excitement. There are people who’ve been there and done that, and can teach us how. We can seek the skills we need. And nothing is ever ‘just the way it is’.

Those five million jobs that are about to disappear? They’ll be replaced by other jobs – most of them in high technology. The only constant is change.

Looking at the commercialisation of new technology through the lens of prosperity rather than through the lies of scarcity, what are the opportunities? In a word, they are boundless.

One of the key enablers is in equipping our science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduates and workforce with business and entrepreneurial skills. There are a multitude of programs and opportunities to do this – mentoring programs, industrial PhD programs, innovation connections programs. They are run by universities, companies, state and federal governments. And by my organisation, Science & Technology Australia.

This multitude of effort to equip scientists and technologists with new enabling skills is also supporting a culture shift. Of course it’s a huge generalisation to that academics need to get better at turning inventions into investments; indeed, there are plenty of examples of this going very well. Over the past 20 years, the rate of Australian patents originating in Australia has grown for almost all technology fields. STA has heard many stories from academics who are planning to strike out on their own and start a business, and many who’ve successfully made that transition.

And as academics watch more of their peers successfully become entrepreneurs, they’re more likely themselves to give business a go. As one entrepreneur put it to me recently: seeing a colleague pull into the carpark driving a luxury car is an excellent incentive to commercialise.

With growing awareness of the benefits of collaborating across sectors, there’s also a growing opportunity to build stronger and more effective business structures, policies and regulations. To capitalise on the speed of technological and scientific innovation that’s occurring in our companies and research institutes. It is a chance to equip our STEM pioneers with the skills to bring their research and technology to the world, and to strengthen our strategic long-term investment in research and design.

Australia's highly educated population, world-class research facilities, and strong political support to transition into a new-era knowledge economy, open a world of possibility for outstanding new technology and hungry entrepreneurs.

The richest man in the world, Bill Gates said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years, and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction”.

So: if the only constant is change, the only choice is to embrace the risk. Face the fear, and ride the wave. You never know where it might take you on the journey from innovation to commercialisation.