VC’ s corner campusreview. com. au
Innovate all over
Universities and other institutions must find even more ways and areas to foster change.
By Attila Brungs
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If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” Perhaps not one of the most famous quotes, but it sums up precisely why Australia must be innovative.
It would appear that here in Australia we punch above our weight in terms of productivity and research outputs. Indeed, the Global Innovation Index 2014 reveals that Australia lifted its ranking from 19th to 17th, performing well in certain sectors, most notably tertiary education, research and development and information and communication technology.
Australia has the knowledge infrastructure, capacity and highly skilled workforce to succeed on the global scale. However, I would caution that we are at a tipping point and must scale-up our innovation successes and rethink our approach to human capital and knowledge infrastructure if we are to continue to thrive.
As Catherine Livingstone, president of the Business Council Australia, outlined in a recent speech at the Universities Australia Conference, we are entering a new era. An era of increasing global competition and changing demographics. An era of unprecedented change, where in the next 10 to 20 years many current jobs will simply no longer exist.
Universities and education are a critical aspect of the knowledge infrastructure that underpins Australia’ s innovation system and information economy. Universities drive innovation, productivity, future prosperity – our very quality of life.
In hard economic terms, universities directly contribute over $ 2.3 billion to our GDP. Graduates are worth $ 188 billion to our economy annually. Then there is the impact of university research, collaboration, the experience we offer graduates and much more.
As drivers of innovation, universities have a key role to play in this debate – and as such we need to take a much more holistic view of innovation. Too often we get caught up thinking narrowly about innovation and equate it in terms of creating new technologies or as being achieved only
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