Creating an ‘Innovation Economy’ will be an evolution, not a revolution
In this guest post Sam Court argues Australia’s bid to become an innovation hub will need a mindshift from everyone about what innovation really is.
If Australia truly wants to become a global hub for innovation, we need to not only look at funding mechanisms for high-risk start-ups, but also at giving better incentives for established brands to make calculated investments.
As our first leader to have an understanding of the impact of digital technology, Malcolm Turnbull’s recent succession to the Prime Ministerial throne seems to have reignited the public’s interest in the so called “innovation economy”. Clearly, Australia needs to do more than simply dig up our natural resources and send them overseas.
The media have continued to fuel this excitement, publishing countless interviews with start-up success stories like Atlassian, and with the up-and-coming occupants at incubation spaces like Fishburners. To be honest, it’s hard not to get excited; however, appreciating the distinction between innovation and invention is important.
“Many of the clients I’ve worked with have backlogs of innovative ideas, but are paralysed to implement them due to internal conflicts, constant reprioritisation, and an inability to quantify metrics for success.”
And there it is. Very smart piece Sam.
I agree with the need for innovation. I also agree it’s a challenge for agencies to be part of this innovation. I wrote a story at the beginning of the year called Why are plumbers smarter than digital agencies.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-plumbers-smarter-than-digital-agencies-simon-van-wyk?published=u
I think clients need to drive their own innovation. It might involve the agency but it’s very hard for an external vendor to be part of a “fail and learn” innovation cycle.
Also agree with the comment on Australian being too tied up with buying a house. I was just up at the top of WA. They don’t have the same issues and people are using their capital for all manner of interesting business innovations.
Mmmmm, what a tall drink of water that Sam Court is! I’m thirsty…
My dream is to have an article about innovation reference Australian start up’s that have overtaken the world. Companies like Atlassian are just the start.
The problem of implementing innovations is well known and can now be predicted. We have completed over 100 assessments of collaboration performance inside large organisations. This measure is a predictor of innovation performance. if a company does not collaborate then it finds it very difficult to implement innovation.
Allan
Agree that innovation is an imperative in the modern market. Having worked on innovation within large multinationals (& admittedly few ideas make it to market for various reasons – risk, budgetary or competing resource reasons being but a few), generally this innovation is contained in-house & the agency isn’t involved until the idea has been thoroughly tested & researched. There are a variety of reasons & how to remunerate an agency against an idea that may never launch is a big one. We all genuinely want to innovate, it is simply about trying to find a way to ensure that up-front costs don’t kill the idea before it even has a shot
I agree with your process.
Agencies aren’t able to give a client the same innovative power that an internal team working on a single product could, due to deadlines, budgets and resources. Perhaps unless they hired a team from the agency to work full time on that product.
We can however (and I’m guessing The White Agency already do, based on what I’m reading here), share with clients our creative processes and encourage them to use them for themselves. A client who is continuously driving their own innovation but needs your help to facilitate that is always an enjoyable client to work with!
@Allen Ryan
“We have completed over 100 assessments of collaboration performance inside large organisations. This measure is a predictor of innovation performance”.
Say wha?