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The Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering (http://www.warren.usyd. edu.au/), is an independent, industry-linked think-tank committed to fostering excellence and innovation in advanced engineering throughout Australia. Shelston IP has been a proud sponsor of the Innovation Lecture for the last five years, including the landmark tenth lecture.
The 2005 lecture was presented by Mr Paul Salteri, Group Managing Director of Tenix, in Melbourne on 8 March and in Sydney on 9 March. Mr Salteri spoke of today’s challenges facing innovators, including cost pressures, distribution channels, export controls, international ‘home grown’ preferences, rapid change, limiting mind-sets, and cultures non-conducive to innovation.
On how to harness innovation in the face of these challenges, Mr Salteri suggested that, “The best way to innovate in any business, is to innovate your way ahead of the competition ... You need to create ‘temporary monopolies’ for your products and services – you, quite simply, need to make yourself indispensable ... Innovation is driven by culture, and the ability to implement. This can be achieved by harnessing the creative power of your greatest asset – your people”. He said that successfully commercialising innovation included knowing your market, strategy and timing.
As an example, Mr Salteri cited Tenix’s $40 million ‘Take-to-market’ fund which “provided in-house support ... for high-growth, high-return business opportunities, focused on establishing [Tenix’s] capability to commercialise and market emerging technologies.” Another example was Tenix developing and patenting “an innovative light-weight cladding for retrofitting to Naval surface ships, and other large potential ‘targets’, to reduce their radar reflectivity.”
In fostering innovation beyond Tenix, Mr Salteri said that innovation needs to be put “fairly and squarely on the Government agenda – ideally it should be part of our national goals and be factored into economic planning and long-term strategies.” He suggested that the Government’s investment in innovation should be far broader than just R&D direct funding, “... with innovation dollars being channelled into all levels of education and all manner of community initiatives.”
Finally, Mr Salteri said that, “we need to create a culture hungry for innovation and change; a nation not concerned with ‘she’ll be right’; but one focused on ‘she’ll be better’.” Mr Salteri, we couldn’t agree with you more!
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