OECD INNOVATION STRATEGY ROUNDTABLE HELD IN CANBERRA

More than 100 participants from business, education, research and government around Australia and New Zealand attended a two-day roundtable discussion on innovation strategy organised by the OECD in Canberra on 25 and 26 February.

Representatives from the Business and Industry Development Branch of the ACT Chief Minister’s Department contributed the ACT perspective to the discussions.

The Roundtable is part of a series being conducted in OECD countries to gather national stakeholders’ ideas before the finalisation of the OECD’s draft innovation strategy.

For Australian and New Zealand stakeholders, key issues included:

  • Acknowledgement that the basic frameworks for innovation are generally in place and greater focus needs to be placed on how to get them to work more effectively and efficiently.
  • Considering that most innovation (over 95%) originates from elsewhere in the world, the innovation strategy for Australia and New Zealand should be two-pronged, with one focus on improving the capability to translate local R&D effort into innovative outcomes and the other focusing on enhancing the capability for uptake of innovative ideas from elsewhere.
  • The critical importance of collaboration in innovation, improvements in measuring innovation, and ensuring long-term focus of innovation policy to provide the appropriate framework and incentives to address long-term global challenges, including food security, climate change and health.

To return to the full list of newsletter articles, click: here