Last week I had the opportunity to speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas held at the spectacular Sydney Opera House. My co-panelists were Martin Rogers, biomed entrepreneur and founder of Prima Biomed, and Prof Alec Cameron, Dean of the Australian School of Business. Our topic: “What's killing Australian innovation?”
My view is that the future of innovation in Australia is neither as dark as that topic suggests, nor is it all sunny. A recent Federal Government report concludes that we’re very good at incremental innovation, which essentially means adapting overseas innovations. Yet despite being blessed with ample talent and capital, plus a reasonably strong education system, Australia produces relatively few global innovations. Arguably, countries with much smaller populations, such as Finland, Switzerland, Israel, and Taiwan, have performed much better.
So what’s holding us back then?
From my experience, what may be holding us back from achieving our innovation potential is our attitude towards failure. It might sound counter-intuitive, but big innovation and failure are intimately intertwined. All innovations are essentially experiments which carry the prospect of failure. Innovators in the US, and particularly Silicon Valley, where I lived for 16 years, understand this only too well.
Sadly, Steve Jobs, one of the greatest innovators of our time, passed away yesterday. I watched his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech (well worth the time) in which he describes how “failure” has shaped his life for the better. In particular, his getting fired from Apple, the company he founded, liberated him to think afresh, and start, not one, but two new companies, Next and Pixar.
Australians love success, but we hate failure. As a result, we can be very harsh on entrepreneurs who try and fail. Yet if you look into the history of many innovators, just like Steve Jobs, you will find many examples of failure being a way point on the road to success.
It’s high time we started to embrace failure as much as we embrace success.
My view is that the future of innovation in Australia is neither as dark as that topic suggests, nor is it all sunny. A recent Federal Government report concludes that we’re very good at incremental innovation, which essentially means adapting overseas innovations. Yet despite being blessed with ample talent and capital, plus a reasonably strong education system, Australia produces relatively few global innovations. Arguably, countries with much smaller populations, such as Finland, Switzerland, Israel, and Taiwan, have performed much better.
So what’s holding us back then?
From my experience, what may be holding us back from achieving our innovation potential is our attitude towards failure. It might sound counter-intuitive, but big innovation and failure are intimately intertwined. All innovations are essentially experiments which carry the prospect of failure. Innovators in the US, and particularly Silicon Valley, where I lived for 16 years, understand this only too well.
Sadly, Steve Jobs, one of the greatest innovators of our time, passed away yesterday. I watched his 2005 Stanford University commencement speech (well worth the time) in which he describes how “failure” has shaped his life for the better. In particular, his getting fired from Apple, the company he founded, liberated him to think afresh, and start, not one, but two new companies, Next and Pixar.
Australians love success, but we hate failure. As a result, we can be very harsh on entrepreneurs who try and fail. Yet if you look into the history of many innovators, just like Steve Jobs, you will find many examples of failure being a way point on the road to success.
It’s high time we started to embrace failure as much as we embrace success.
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