PERTH, Australia — A researcher by training, Siavash Noorbakhsh says he didn’t consider his published papers on trauma and intensive care worthy of developing into a business. That changed after he attended a boot camp for entrepreneurs in this city on Australia’s southwest coast.
At the intense, one-week camp, he identified new pathways to put his theoretical knowledge into practice. Noorbakhsh says he’s now moving forward with a mentor to develop a business plan to bring his ideas to patients.
“Before, I was thinking that commercializing an idea was only for famous researchers with lots of money, cutting-edge ideas and connections,” says Noorbakhsh, an Iranian who moved to Australia three years ago. “But I learned it’s not out of my reach. It doesn’t require a lot of money, just a proper mindset and a good mentor to help me see the opportunities and avoid dead ends.”
The boot camp Noorbakhsh attended is part of a program geared to planting the seeds of innovation and encouraging more start-up industries in Australia. The camp aims to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, and the people enrolled in the program come from a mix of fields, including engineering, life sciences, cyber security, physical sciences, agriculture and the performing arts.
The program, called the Centre for Entrepreneurial Research and Innovation, or CERI, is one part of a broader effort underway to diversify Western Australia State’s economy and lessen its reliance on mining. Despite a recent spurt of job growth, resources and energy sectors have experienced sharp numbers of job losses for the past five years.
The move to diversify the national economy has also taken on urgency: A federal government report released earlier this year warns Australia’s economy will stagnate during the next 25 years without developing new industries.
Such warnings alarm Charlie Bass, the founder of CERI. Bass made a fortune in mining in Western Australia, and he is concerned the state could become a dust bowl in a few generations if other industries aren’t encouraged.
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Although the mining industry has seen boom-bust cycles over the years, Bass says he’s never seen it quite as depressed as it is today in Western Australia, where mining is the only driver of the economy. The value of Western Australia’s mineral and petroleum industry fell 12 percent from the previous year, the government said.
As a result, Western Australia trails the nation in eight key economic indicators, including economic growth, housing and unemployment, according to the discount stockbroking firm Commonwealth Securities.
Western Australia’s recent mining boom, which was closely pegged to China’s skyrocketing growth, helped the country ride out the global recession. Australia was one of the few developed economies that didn’t suffer a major dip, and Western Australia carried the country’s economy during those years. Many migrated from the more populous eastern states. Real estate prices soared in outpost mining areas as tradespeople poured into the state.
But Western Australia has been hit hard as China’s economy slowed from double-digit growth to single digits. Those who came from the eastern states for the boom are now fleeing the state.
The state government has been hesitant to embrace other industries, Bass says, calling such tentativeness the “the resources curse,” when an economy can’t wean itself off resources. For example, Bass says Kalgoorlie was a depressed mining town in 1978 , when he first arrived in Australia from the U.S. Today, the town roughly 370 miles northeast of Perth, is a center for gold mining and nickel, but its economy remains one-dimensional.
Bass is sinking millions into mentoring entrepreneurs. He provides start-up office space and matches aspiring entrepreneurs with mentors. CERI doesn’t charge for its services, and it doesn’t take equity or intellectual property. Bass funds it as a philanthropic effort.
In looking at other industries, Bass discovered Australia has world-class research — a gold mine one could say — for entrepreneurs. Money was flowing into research institutes and universities, but nothing was flowing out.
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“Because the university system and research industry is all driven by the federal government, there becomes a disconnect between how you take that research and start creating industry,” he says. “There’s a funding gap and a management gap.”
What’s needed, he says, is an entrepreneurial education on how to think differently to help these post-doctoral researchers get their research out of the lab and into the real world.
To encourage these high-value industries, the federal government established a new agency to put innovation and science at the center of a future Australian economy. In its report released in February, Innovation Australia said the country compares well to other nations in knowledge creation but does poorly in transferring and applying that knowledge.
Bill Ferris, who started Australia’s first venture capital company, leads the new agency. Ferris says Australia runs the risk of squandering its potential in the research sector if it doesn’t learn how to keep talent and projects in the country.
Ferris, who came out of the Harvard Business School in 1960, believes there is a case for venture capital in Australia. The country, he says, is beginning to see some success with venture capital and is trying to accelerate that new growth.
Such growth may depend on creativity. Homegrown Australian inventions include the black box flight recorder, invented in 1953 by scientist David Warren. Additionally, Wi-Fi technology came out of the core research developed at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, CSIRO, in the 1970s in the field of radio astronomy. In medical research, Australia’s multinational pharmaceutical company CSL developed Gardasil, the world’s first anti-cancer vaccine for cervical cancer. The first cochlear implant, or bionic ear, also was invented in Australia, as was the first ultrasound scanner in 1976.
[ READ: Learn of 5 inventions that came from Australia.]
Although the country enjoys a high standard of living, good wages and a generous social welfare net compared to its Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development peers, it ranks lowest when it comes to collaboration between universities and the business sector.
The Innovation Australia report points to various industries where Australia can be globally competitive: advanced manufacturing; cybersecurity; food and agribusiness; medical technologies and pharmaceuticals; mining equipment, technology and services; and oil, gas and energy resources.
Federal government initiatives encourage innovation include tax breaks for early-stage investors in innovative startups. The government also is supporting incubators to ensure startups have access to resources, knowledge and networks.
Innovation and Science Australia also has launched a new biomedical translation fund — a co-investment pool of venture capital targeting medical technology and biotechnology companies and is providing $250 million of matching funds to bring these technologies to the market.
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Australia Encouraging Innovation to Diversify its Economy originally appeared on usnews.com
