Leading Tasmanian thinker Jonathan West dies, passionate advocate for innovation
One of Tasmania’s most distinguished thinkers, academics and advisers has died. LATEST
Tasmania
Don't miss out on the headlines from Tasmania. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Professor Jonathan West, one of Tasmania’s most accomplished intellectuals whose passion for the state’s potential helped bolster the foundations of its current economic success, died this past weekend after a long illness. He was 66.
In an academic and business career that took him from Hobart to Harvard to the Huon Valley and just about everywhere in between, he advised state, national and overseas companies and governments on the cutting edge of innovation policy, economic development and agribusiness.
He wrote influential essays on the Tasmanian political culture and played a key role in inquiries into topics as diverse as innovation, forestry and the case for a Tasmanian AFL team.
Along the way, he helped to resurrect a struggling Huon Valley abattoir.
Professor West held an undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney, and master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, where he spent nearly two decades before returning to his home state.
He founded the Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Tasmania and served on the boards of multiple companies, as well as advising the governments of Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Japan, New Zealand and Australian states and political leaders including the late Labor leader Simon Crean.
Former Premier David Bartlett said Professor West was an “extraordinary intellectual asset” for the state who contributed his extensive global connections to the development of Tasmanian’s success in emerging industries such as food and wine.
“I’d go to lunch with him and leave thinking my brain had expanded by 10 per cent, he always gave your brain a great workout,” he said.
“When I became Premier I commissioned him to develop Tasmania’s first industry innovation strategy.
“He wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power, say ‘this is bulls..t, what are we doing here?’.
“He didn’t mind challenging the norms and taking people out of their comfort zones.”
Professor West was a founder and faculty director for the Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project, which was formed to understand and explain the economic implications of the revolution in biotechnology.
Back home, he was the author of the 2007 Tasmanian Innovation Strategy, the Chair of the 2012 independent Verification Group which produced a comprehensive report into forestry and the author of a 2014 report on the case for a state AFL team.
Professor David Adams said his former colleague was a deeply practical man, who knew innovation was the product of the networks that grew from those who worked on the shop floor or the farm paddock with a deep passion for AFL football.
“He genuinely believed in Tasmania’s potential, he could see Tasmania being lifted to where we are now, almost before anyone else,” he said.
“He was at least a decade ahead of his time in understanding that innovation and prosperity in Tasmania was going to come from small and medium enterprises being entrepreneurial and innovative.
“He was the first to shine the light on the really positive future of entrepreneurship and innovation and a focus on quality rather than quantity.
“He showed how important informal relationships and networks were to innovation, the fostering of the right networks was what drove innovation.
“Some of these ideas clashed with traditional public service ideas about innovation.
“Jonathan’s global knowledge and competence gave him the ability to stand up and talk about what he believed was right for Tasmania.”
His 2013 Griffith Review Essay “Obstacles to Progress: What’s Wrong with Tasmanian, Really?” resonates a decade after its publication as a rejection of intergenerational underachievement.
“Tasmania has developed a way of life, a mode of doing things, a demographic, a culture and associated economy, that reproduces underachievement generation after generation,” he wrote.
“Everyone knows the problems; they are manifest, reported day after day. The reality is that Tasmania has bred a dominant social coalition that blocks most proposals to improve. “Problems and challenges are debated endlessly, with no resolution.”
Former Premier Michael Field said Professor West has served as an important role as an adviser for governments during the early part of the century, developed an interest in AFL football as intense as his other passions.
“He became infatuated with Richmond. It was compulsory for him to watch every game,” he said, adding it was just one facet of a man with multitudes of wide-ranging interests.
“He always had an original way of looking at things. He was innovative and came forward with ideas that enabled people to look at things a different way.”
He remained active on multiple advisory boards as motor neurone disease slowly took its toll, even completing a doctoral degree in classics at the University of Tasmania in 2022. He is survived by his wife Susan and their son Erik Louis.
Funeral arrangements for Professor West have not yet been announced.
Kangaroo Bay Hotel gets ‘major project’ status
After a big red light from the council, the Kangaroo Bay Hotel has been thrown a lifeline: now granted ‘major project’ status. But it’s no guarantee the project will go ahead. Read what’s next.
Plibersek plays straight bat on salmon decision
The future of the salmon industry in Macquarie Harbour has been in limbo for the last 12 months after a request for a review into the industry. Here’s what the Federal Minister had to say.