An interesting post, which touches on a topic that I was addressing in a different forum just the other day.

As you’d know with your background @ Nicta, and as I learnt during my recent advisory work with Smart Services CRC, the government has a huge focus on innovation + commercialisation of that innovation within Australia.

This is a good thing, and should be encouraged.

Unfortunately, as we both know, policy-wonks and the bureaucrats who administer the various schemes simply don’t have a real clue about how innovation + successful commercialisation work. They are loathe to fund (or continue to fund) efforts, unless there is a clear schedule of works, with milestones and outcomes and outputs etc.

Accountability for funding is to be encouraged, but true innovation and successful commercialisation simply does not happen in a linear fashion, yet the oversight + funding process is predicated on this. This needs to change - there are alternate/better models for approaching this area.

A related (but more far reaching) issue is government’s inability to accept, cope with or celebrate failure.

The current approach to funding and oversight has very little true tolerance for risk, and no mechanism for recognising that failure can actually be a positive thing (if you don’t have some failures, you’re not truly innovating etc. etc.).

So the government really needs to investigate how it might design a policy around “positive failure”, and how it must change its language, culture and perspectives to allow (dare I say ‘encourage’) such outcomes.

Regards,

Mark