The story of Australia’s innovation and productivity growth makes for sombre reading. The nation's productivity is in a rut - now at its lowest rate since the 1970s. This stagnation is beyond an economic problem — it's holistic, cultural, and emblematic of the complacency that now permeates Australia's national identity. The same can be said about our diversification, and poor integration into APAC markets. Australia ranks 93rd for economic complexity, just ahead of Uganda. However, we punch above our weight in terms of quality of research, and innovation.

To address these deficiencies, the authors of this paper outline two key focus areas - research and investment.

The authors see two key target areas for research funding reform: firstly, toward basic, curiosity-driven foundational research to strengthen sovereign research capacity, and second, toward outcomes-driven translation of applied research to bear economic fruits.

Building Australia’s early-stage investment capacity — and by extension the startup and innovation ecosystem — will support diversification, long-term prosperity and productivity. The investment ecosystem is fundamental to building new markets, jobs, companies, and industries. It is time to address the commercialisation bottlenecks that exist for Australia's home-grown technologies.