Knowledge Nation 2016: task greater than policy envisages

Former Telstra chief and CSIRO chairman David Thodey says the nation needs to retrain six million current workers for the digital transformation — a task far ­beyond anything remotely envisaged in the Turnbull government’s innovation agenda.

At the same time, the chief of GE Australia, Geoff Culbert, warned “every Australian company at the board level needs a digital technology plan” because change was coming “in a way that none of us can imagine” and faster than people expected.

Again, the gap between the goal and the reality is apparent.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of Freelancer, Matt Barrie, punctured optimistic views about Australia’s transition, saying our economy remained “in the Stone Age, literally” and risked missing the “incredible opportunity before us right now” as industry after industry was being con­verted into a software business.

These challenges and warnings came amid a torrent of ideas at yesterday’s Knowledge Nation Summit in Sydney, part-sponsored by The Australian, on progress to a more innovative culture. The dominant theme was that rising competition and technological change has increased the stakes — if Australia succeeds, the gains will be enormous, but failure will bring multiple disappointments.

Imaginations were tested, with Rio Tinto managing director, Pilbara assets, Kellie Parker, who runs the company’s driverless iron ore trucks, saying that by 2030 the nation’s heavy road- haulage industry would be transformed by the advent of driverless trucks.

Angus Taylor, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for ­Cities and Digital Transformation, gave a path-breaking speech on the potential for technology to transform government service, arguing that digital changes could deliver huge savings — ­estimated by Deloitte Australia at $27 billion — and provide the mechanism for a grassroots-driven new model of economic ­reform.

Industry, Innovation and Science Minister Christopher Pyne said the government proposed to introduce its Entrepreneurial Visa, aimed at attracting new ­talent to Australia, in November. He expected tax breaks for investors in start-ups and other tax measures to boost innovation would become operative in July.

Education and Training Minister Simon Birmingham outlined a series of measures to generate ­better ideas and people interaction between industry and universities, the key to improving Australia’s desperately poor performance at turning successful research into commercial applications.

Thodey’s speech reminded that digital education cannot be limited to school and tertiary. It must extend to the current workforce, where corporates face a huge task in developing the human resources for the transformation in their business models.

Culbert said GE worldwide now spent about $1 billion annually on employee training and ­devoted more than 5 per cent of its budget to R & D, prompting the chairman of his panel, business specialist Alan Kohler, to quip: “If Australia’s top 10 companies did that, our problems might be solved!”

Barrie said Australia’s education system was paying only “lip service” to technology. He warned that an innovative culture was being denied by regulatory duplication, mindless populism and absurd state govern­ment policies. Drawing a nexus between ­innovation and culture, he mocked Sydney’s pretences, saying the Baird government wanted to ban “anything remotely resembling fun”, that “every second 22-year-old wants to leave” and nobody from Silicon Valley wants to come to Australia.

Addressing the 200 delegates, Taylor focused on the creative side of the creative-destruction syndrome that defines the digital transformation. He said there were four keys to the “new tool kit” that would render obso­lete the old model of public sector ­administration.

Technology meant power was shifting from governments to ­individuals; the opening-up of government data would drive more private sector innovation; pressure would mount for genuine contestability on government services with the test being outcomes, not activity; and the provision of more services via digital channels would generate large savings on government budgets and better delivery for individuals.

The summit, organised by Knowledge Society, was also backed by the Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, Rio Tinto, Cisco and the ­Industry Department.

Perhaps the underlying message was that nobody has the certain answer as to how Australia becomes a more entrepreneurial society. But the path forward depends upon a permanent dialogue, ­action on many fronts and the testing of new ideas.