The report, Venturous Australia, from Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research regarding the role of Innovation in the Australian economy has some very interesting shifts in thinking that would have major impact for government. The report states ‘Venturing means enterprise and a major bold an perhaps risky undertaking’. It also notes that venturing is forward looking and being prepared to seize the opportunity. In the overview and recommendations, the action plan it states that ‘Innovation is no longer the province of the lone inventor or adept technologist. It is characterised by the skill of collaborating and making connections, so that knowledge flows and grows’. It also talks about the limitations imposed by current intellectual property arrangements which hamper innovation, stating we need a more open innovation policy.
This is all good news. education.au for some 10 years has been involved in creating national networks through online technologies because we know that in a federation where states/territories will follow local priorities, there is great value in connecting people and creating knowledge flows where potentially the same issue is being dealt with at least 8 times around Australia. Recently we launched me.edu.au which fundamentally has been based on the principle of social networks in which people control and create networks and use these networks to create knowledge flows relevant to them. It provides immediate benefit and is one of the most powerful ways in creating sustained professional learning.
Education by its nature is a risk averse business!! We need to embrace the recommendations of this report into the business of education and training. I look forward to seeing how this very good report impacts on government and particularly education thinking.
3 Comments
The report makes a great lever for the mainstreaming of many of the open/social projects and practices education.au has pioneered since 2006. (Shame the text in the pdf of the report is locked down so I can’t copy/paste it here). Take recommendations:
7.2 + 7.8 + 7.14 = ‘Review patent law & IP policy, license Govt info cc:by & put all nationally funded research into global public commons’
The icing on the cake is 9.1 + 10.2 = something education.au has been doing since 2006 ‘embrace high risk Proof of Concept projects + appoint Web2.0 practitioners to help steer … as they experiment with Web2.0 technologies and ideas’
Lets hope your team gets some of the recognition it deserves.
Fang - Mike Seyfang
Mike,
Thanks for your comment and its true that this paper really does set the sails in the right direction for a more open, collaborative and responsive environment. The trick will be in its implementation and I hope they do see that there are organisations which they have invested in that have been doing this for sometime.
Garry
Hi Garry-
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am similarly positive about the report’s proposed direction. However I have some concerns about how easy it will be to implement, and whether it will be enough to help Australia compete with other countries. My comments are in a report for the MBS Center for Ideas and the Economy (http://works.bepress.com/kwanghui/12/)
Best rgds
kwang
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[…] However, I think the informal channels are certainly more engaging (especially since the official responses to the report will not be published). David Wallace has built a Yahoo Pipe for Venturous Australia that compiles the chatter about the report and the innovation system across the web. A few minutes of searching here has led to writings in New Matilda, The Age, The Industry Standard and education.au. Leave a comment or post a blog using tags like ‘venturous’ and “innovation review’ and your materials should be captured here. […]
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