Inside the Centre for Innovation and Collaboration

Bringing together tech, space and defence skills, organisations based at South Australia’s Lot Fourteen innovation hub are becoming a force of interconnected ventures.

A vision of Lot Fourteen, North Terrace, Adelaide, as it will become. Big tech players, such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, have moved in. Microsoft Azure Space and Australia’s Commonwealth Bank have committed to move in this year.

It’s the “watercooler” conversations at Adelaide’s flagship tech, space and defence district that are credited with sparking partnerships that now reach across the world.

Following a three-year development and construction phase, organisations based at South Australia’s Lot Fourteen innovation hub are working on interconnected ventures including satellite technologies, submarine engineering and computer vision.

Likewise, investors are taking notice. Early-stage businesses in the Stone & Chalk startup hub have attracted more than $35m in venture-capital funding.

Lot Fourteen state project lead Di Dixon says collaborations across the district are generating results for in-demand sectors.

“We’ve really had strong momentum,” she says.

“People have really just focused on the sectors of space, defence and hi-tech and creative, [those] who want to come to the precinct for their own benefit and for ours.

“It has been built around those strong strategic partners, the likes of the Australian Space Agency and Australian Institute for Machine Learning. Those have really been the catalysts.”

Lot Fourteen is South Australia’s bid for an innovation district to bring together worldwide companies, education institutions, university researchers and entrepreneurs with tech, defence and space capabilities.

The aim is to leverage skills and increase projects through collaboration and the power of chance interactions.

Lot Fourteen state project lead Di Dixon.

The vision is global. Lot Fourteen seeks to be an Australian Silicon Valley-style hub for tech, robotics, AI, machine learning, defence capabilities, space endeavours, cyber security and data science, all underpinned by an outlook of innovation.

In this, it mirrors the other innovation districts in South Australia, based around tech at Technology Park Adelaide, and advanced manufacturing at Tonsley Innovation District.

Located on the seven hectare former site of the Royal Adelaide Hospital in the northern central business district, the hub is now a bustling home to 72 established businesses and 56 startup companies. Together they employ more than 1300 workers.

One of the early entrants to the urban renewal redevelopment more than three years ago was medtech Presagen. The company, spun out of a University of Adelaide incubator, has developed an AI solution to optimise the selection of embryos for IVF, reducing the number of cycles required for a clinical pregnancy.

Presagen chief marketing officer Kimon Lycos says Presagen moved to the district for the promise of being around like-minded, globally focused companies.

“Two of our founders have shifted over to the US – it’s part of the capital-raising plan – and while they’ve been over there they have been able to catch up with fellow Lot Fourteen people,” he says.

“The social networking and the community feel has occurred all the way over to San Francisco.”

This focus on collaboration has also been key for global cloud-computing giant Microsoft Azure Space, which moved to the district last September.

The space industry-focused tech service has been quick to partner with organisations in and around Lot Fourteen, including working with Adecco Group’s Modis to develop the Tech Start training program and collaborating with the Australian Space Agency.

Microsoft Azure Space senior program manager Nicholas Moretti says their business supports the space industry, and Lot Fourteen’s concentration of space companies made it a strategic choice.

“From start-up, scale-ups, government and defence, it’s really the heart of the Australian space industry,” he says.

“So to be immersed in that every day, and understand what the industry is doing, what the problems are, and how we can help them, is hugely beneficial to us.

“There has been a huge amount of opportunity that has come from Lot Fourteen, plugging them into global Microsoft and leveraging our resources.”

Lot Fourteen’s Dixon says the blend of industries and ideas across organisations in the district – “people who wouldn’t normally have met” – is starting to yield results in terms of partnerships and projects.

She points to the $6.5m SA Space Services Mission which will deliver an Australian-first state satellite. This brings together commercial satellite manufacturer Inovor Technologies to design, build and test the satellite; global space company Myriota to provide Internet of Things services; with the mission led by the national SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre (CRC).

Likewise, US national security not-for-profit MITRE has partnered with global cybersecurity company DTEX Systems to create the MITRE Centre for Information Integrity & Defence.

It is expected to offer a service to identify and protect industry and government organisations from insider risk, based on data use and behavioural and technical sciences.

Elsewhere in the district, work under way spans machine learning to develop computer vision, the creation of a premium craft beer on a recipe refined through the power of AI.

“It’s about that cross-collaboration and mix of industry sectors,” Dixon says.

“We really are starting to see the outcomes of collaborations and the attraction of those who want to be clustered around the type of activities we generate. The focus for them is about seeing that closeness to industry, and the benefits of that, and the ability to have very close knowledge transfer.”

Dixon says this face-to-face interaction has become even more coveted following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It has made people more appreciative of the benefits – that criticality of face-to-face interactions,” she says.

“You’re not going to get that water-cooler, cup-of-coffee, drink-after-work collaboration working from home. That is where things just start to happen.”

Major corporations have also seen the benefits.

Big tech players, such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services, have moved in. Over the past six months they were joined by Microsoft Azure Space, and Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has committed to move in this year.

The financial giant has established a Technology Hub to complement the bank’s technology and cybersecurity focus.

When established, it will have 150 specialist roles that will address the sector skills shortages. It is hoped this will address current and future skill requirements.

Other diverse entrants include The Circle – First Nations Entrepreneur Hub, Australian Space Discovery Centre and Mission Control Centre.

The development is now at capacity for its current leases, and work is under way to build more.

Quintessential Equity is developing a 16-storey, 41,000sqm, $400m building that will house a future Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre.

When the district development is complete, expected to be in 2028, there will be about 6000 workers and researchers on site. And this, it is hoped, will generate multiplier effects in innovation for the nation.

Presagen’s Lycos says the collegiate nature of the district is also a great morale booster.

“Being able to see what other people are doing in very diverse and different areas can give you some pause,” he says.

“It’s the building blocks for relationships that are just about unbreakable. It’s going to help the next generation and the next generation. Having this high concentration of local start-ups, and people who are highly ambitious to take on the world, is a very beneficial thing.

“There are a lot of cool things happening here in Adelaide.

“It’s being part of something bigger and smarter, and together we can grow and create more high-value jobs and world-class solutions.”