Australia’s innovation ecosystem has grown rapidly over recent years to provide a strong base. What comes next will leverage specialisation in industry and technology, tap into growing capability and capacity across each aspect of the ecosystem, and provide national and global connections for collective impact towards global challenges.
Two thirds of Australia’s over 1,000 spaces, funds, and programs dedicated to developing innovation and entrepreneurs have been established in the past five years. This ecosystem of investment funds, innovation spaces, networking groups, government agencies, and accelerators are geographically distributed across the eight states and territories and increasingly specialised by sector, technology, and area of impact. Sector-focused programs include food and agriculture, creative industries, mining and energy, financial services, sports, space, and defence. Technologies emphasised include artificial intelligence, cyber security, quantum, advanced manufacturing, and web3 / blockchain. Programs are dedicated to areas of impact including climate, female, Indigenous, and youth entrepreneurship, and rural ecosystem building. Support for these programs comes from across ecosystem roles of government, university, corporations, venture capital, and philanthropy. These activities are supported by an increasing amount of venture capital funds, with over AU$2.3 billion raised in 2022 alone.
What comes next will require greater connectivity and collaboration across the nation and globally to address challenges that no single organisations or region can solve on its own. The Australian innovation ecosystem is already mobilised around shared challenges of climate impacts including drought and natural disasters of fire and flooding, national security, energy sustainability, workforce skilling, agriculture productivity, and medical breakthroughs to name just a few. Emerging peak bodies including the Technology Council of Australia provide advocacy and a shared voice. Mission-orientated programs focus attention including the $2 billion state-government initiated Breakthrough Victoria Fund that focuses capital on shared challenges, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) missions to mobilise the research sector for practical targets, and specialised venture funds such as climate-focused AU $1 billion Grok Ventures fund created by Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. We will build on initiatives such as these for a national and global perspective through the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC).
The Global Entrepreneurship Congress is coming to Melbourne 2023 and is designed to further support connectivity and collaboration to support entrepreneurs to realise global impact. The program encourages delegates to connect around areas of shared focus by industry sector, technology, areas of impact, and functional areas of the ecosystem. Are you interested in addressing equity in female founders in the agriculture sector for regional communities? How about migrant entrepreneur opportunities to engage in deep tech? Or engaging young people in the use of artificial intelligence for the space sector and to address climate impacts? How about enabling government policy to support entrepreneurs across investment stages? Perhaps developing sustainable incubation models focused on sectors such as creative industries or sports? These are just some examples of the sparks of innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities that happen at the cross-section of diverse ideas and perspectives. GEC 2023 is designed to foster these serendipitous collisions to ignite lasting connections and practical outcomes.
These interactions will help establish new relationships and build upon existing connections and lasting innovation ecosystem infrastructure between the Australian innovation ecosystem and global precincts and economies. The Congress brings together national and global innovative thinkers, founders, policy makers, and investors to not only solve complex challenges but address systemic barriers for future entrepreneurs. For Melbourne, GEC is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build on our existing success and enable greater connection and scale across the Australian innovation ecosystem and the world.
Join us. Registration for GEC 2023 is now open at www.gec.co.