Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’


Sustainability: A high stakes game

September 16th, 2009 by Kaitlyn Scannell

There is risk involved in any new development, but it’s a matter of how much risk we are prepared to take.

Pracsys has done a lot of financial analysis to determine whether various sustainable technologies, such as recycled water, are viable compared with current methods, such as traditional scheme water, in the developments of the future.

There is no doubt we need to embrace alternative technology; the problem is the capital costs associated with these technologies are often very high.  Add the fact that current technology is so heavily subsidised and the comparative cost really starts to add up – and the stakes get higher.

In making investment decision does the developer risk short and medium returns in the knowledge that cashflows will be positive in the future? Alternatively do we sit on our hands, watch and wait and hope that such technologies become relatively more affordable once others pave the way and economies of scale are achieved?

No-one wants to be the first to jump, the one to pay a premium for taking that leap of faith. Particularly given that we’re talking about the basics that everyone should have access to – water, power, transport. If the end user doesnt percieve the full value of these technologies then the developer will need to subsidise the price to make it attractive to market.

If Government, for example, were to embrace sustainable alternatives, who would pay for it? Would it put the basics beyond the reach of lower income residents?

There are some advantages in being the first to take the leap, to set benchmarks for others to follow. Water is a scare resource in Perth; it’s a fact that we need a more sustainable method of water supply.

recycled water

The trick is to strike the right balance between the  risk and the benefits, both economic and environmental, of such action. And this means Governments making some hard decisions, working to sway public opinion on issues such as recycled water, and ultimately being convinced that they should take a chance, even if the figures don’t stack up in the here and now.

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Posted by Kaitlyn Scannell Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Feasibility, Innovation, News, infrastructure | 1 Comment »


Future jobs: What your kids will be doing

August 20th, 2009 by Michael

As cities have evolved, so have the jobs that go with them. Think for a minute about the sort of work your grandparents did. Now imagine what industry your son or daughter might be working in. Chances are it will be as foreign to you as it would be to your grandparents.

Your grandmother, if she worked outside the home at all, might have been in the typing pool or an old-fashioned secretary who made the tea and took shorthand for her male boss; your grandfather a loans clerk at a bank or a worker at a manufacturing plant.

They might have had six children, but certainly not fewer than four so they never wasted a thing; clothes were handed down; meals made out of the very basics.

Service, they will tell you, was more personal in their day. They knew their bank manager by name, their doctor regularly did house calls; if they needed anything fixed – from the radio to a car engine or office equipment – there would be a guy down the road who’d have it done in a jiffy; rare holidays would be planned with maps, brochures and trusted travel agents.

You, on the other hand, are likely to be working in mining, in IT, or be self-employed. The secretary is more likely to be a personal assistant who also has a degree and multi-skills in computers, office management and accounting.

You probably only have two children and they already have a plethora of “stuff” that you don’t understand and they certainly don’t need. If you want a loan, you apply online and hear back within a few days without ever having a conversation with anyone, let alone going into a bank; if something’s broken you’re far more likely to throw it away than have it fixed; and if you want to go on holidays you probably book the whole thing online.

So many jobs have either gone completely, are on the way out, or will undergo a complete transformation to adapt to a changing society.

In the past we bought more of life’s essentials; now we spend a lot more on things that are not necessary. With rising living standards comes increased consumption and more pressure on finite resources.

Sustainability, then, will be a big player in the workforce of your children’s future. As will the likes of genetic medicine and innovations in technology for the care of an ageing population.

Some of their job titles may sound like science fiction to you (and certainly to your grandparents) but as society’s priorities change so will the nature of their employment. Future jobs will include the likes of:

Telemedicine technician. Forget the traditional GP. These guys will act as support assistants who can diagnose conditions using state-of-the-art GPS medical systems; they won’t even need you to be in the same room.

Chief innovation officer. Someone paid to move the ideas along, to organise innovation efforts and find ways to commercialise them, to maximise entrepreneurial outcomes.

Corporate alumni director. If networks are knowledge capital, then places (ie cities) with a lot of knowledgeable alumni are very valuable resources indeed, resources that need fostering and careful managing.

Eco-relations manager. With a growing focus on green energy and sustainability there will be more and more green collar jobs, such as selling carbon credits or managing carbon allocation.

Retirement consultants. With an ageing population, jobs will change to provide greater services to cater for their needs. A wealthier, “younger” aged population will demand better services.

Whatever their jobs, your children will be adapting to changes in society, just as you, your parents and grandparents did before them. As always, developments will be about increasing efficiency, getting more output from the same input, no matter the science and technology behind those job changes.


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The rise of the city

August 17th, 2009 by Michael

In 1900 only 10 percent of people lived in cities; now it’s more like 50 percent. By 2050 the forecast is for more than 75 percent of the world’s population to be in the city.

While growth has not happened overnight it has certainly accelerated over time. With each passing age, from the agrarian through to the information age, the city has grown in stature.

Cities quickly became the centres of activity and, thus, increasingly represent the concentration of humanity. Inventions such as the Internet and rapid transit have only added to their growth.

And as the emphasis shifts to intellectual property, cities become even more important. In order for a city to be successful you need the right networks to form, the right groups of individuals coming together in a concentration of infrastructure and an environment that provides that right social and intellectual stimulation for innovation to happen.

Australian cities aren’t doing so well on this front. Too many decisions on changes to our cities are based on limited information. How do we cater for the growing population, for example? We determine where the cheapest land is and build there. Never mind that this land happens to be further and further away from the city centre, making it more difficult for us to operate efficiently, reducing the quality of available employment and transport. In other words, building cities that are inherently less sustainable into the future.

European cities, on the other hand, have a degree of maturity that recognises sustainability as a survival strategy. They know from experience how important the allocation of resources is to the future.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Without enormous resources to haul out of the ground or sheep’s backs to ride on, countries such as Finland have shown just how to turn an apparent negative into a longterm positive – creating cities that are based around the growth of knowledge industries, cities that take the allocation of resources seriously and look at all relevant indicators, not single factors such as the availability of land.

Too many Australian cities are mired in the short-term fix. In Perth in particular, where the memory of WA Inc still burns brightly, there is almost a terror of anything that hints at the public and private sector working in concert.
Government operates in three year cycles; decisions are too often made with one eye on the next election for fear of changes in public opinion. We need a more balanced long term view of all the structures for a viable city.

The private sector which can react very quickly and institutions which can find solutions very quickly need to be given equal weight and access to decision making. They need to share equal billing if cities are to move forward.

You only have to look at the squandered riches of the state’s boom to realise the risk of not acting. Where are the major pieces of infrastructure, the innovative projects to come out of all those mining dollars? We need a complete rethink of governance.

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Smart City Radio: Innovative Entrepreneur

July 31st, 2009 by OM4

Ron Kitchens is the CEO of Southwest Michigan First, a non-profit organization dedicated to being a catalyst for success in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Ron talks about incubating new companies in this economy and how smaller businesses can thrive when large corporations fail.

Eric Mathews is the founder of Launch Memphis, an organisation that nurtures technology startups in Memphis. Eric talks about how technology can help seed an entrepreneurial community and be used to bring entrepreneurs together.
Click here to view this podcast.

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Innovation 101: Lessons from Texas to Spain

July 29th, 2009 by Michael

These recent articles from The Economist offer many salient points for discussion, as well as valuable lessons for Australia’s future.

The first, In Search of A New Economy, looks at the changing economy in Spain, where public spending on research and development has tripled, but the private sector has barely budged. The country’s new Minister for Science and Innovation argues that change is needed throughout the economy.

The second, Beyond Oil, analyses the state of Texas and just how well placed, or otherwise, this behemoth is for life after the oil dries up. Energy is still high on the agenda, but from some unexpected sources.

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We must weave better networks

January 27th, 2009 by Michael

Innovation requires an ability to grasp the need for change.

How do you ensure that the right people are brought together to generate innovative solutions to major problems?

Policy makers recognise the need for knowledge precincts; to develop technology parks and put them near universities or hospitals, to offer subsidised rents and generally create conditions that facilitate knowledge transfers.

But knowledge creation requires people who have the potential to find solutions to be deliberately put in each other’s way. It’s not enough for planners to build smart buildings, put in nice park benches and places for various boffins to eat. Planners must physically intervene in networks of people to help form knowledge hubs.

Knowledge hubs are intersections of pieces of the network that have similar enough interests but different technical backgrounds.

The traditional planning approach has been to build the physical infrastructure required for a development and to then let the market take care of itself.

That is like saying we want a really high yield wheat crop and we know we need a nice field, a tractor, some rain and some seeds. So we’ll go and get all of them and we’ll put them all in the field, the sack of seeds next to the tractor and make sure it rains and we’ll have great crops. Well, of course, you won’t. All you’re going to end up with is a wet tractor and a bag of rotten seeds.

Networking weaving is about putting all the ingredients together in the right combination so they can produce the right outcome.

The work Pracsys has been doing with the Brisbane Knowledge Corridor and the redevelopment of Tonsley Park in south Adelaide addresses the need for policy makers to be aware of the part they must play in network weaving.

In the case of Tonsley Park, if it had been left up to the market, as is the traditional thinking, big retail and fast food chains would have simply moved in because the site is on a highway with good visibility and great exposure.

But the State Government said, “no, with the Mitsubishi plant closing we’re losing all these export jobs and we know that heavy manufacturing is marginal because we don’t have a comparative advantage with the cost of labour in Australia. So what can we put there?”

When Pracsys was first brought in, the comment was “right, we want to build a knowledge precinct, what buildings should we build?”

Our goal was to get them thinking beyond the physical infrastructure to the sort of knowledge activities that would ensure a viable precinct. Buildings won’t attract the right people. Knowledge activity requires a different kind of planning.

This is where the network weaving conversation comes in. The South Australian Government wanted to turn Tonsley Park into a knowledge precinct focused on renewable energy.  So a series of questions needed to be asked and answered: Where are the existing activities in the state? How do you bring them together? What pieces are missing? Do you need to pay a subsidy to get the missing elements to relocate?

We went through the mechanics of what it would cost to weave a network that would in effect give them a knowledge precinct, apart from the physical buildings.

Once you’ve got those people together, they can talk until the cows come home about the equipment and buildings required to do their jobs properly. That’s the easy part. The hard part is network weaving.

Network weaving demands that all the collaboration mechanisms be brought together and all the barriers to innovative solutions be taken away.

Policy makers don’t yet grasp the need to formally facilitate these network hubs and that’s the thinking we need to change.

What governments do is they try to re-invent the wheel. We need renewable energy so let’s invent the new solar technology.  Well, no, you don’t need to invent the new solar technology… it’s already there. Instead we should be going wherever the technology is and saying, “we’ve got a real interest in this, we’ve got all these researchers, what would it take for you to come over and help us out and how can we help you? And if we can’t get you to physically move can we at least meet with you and share information?”.

It’s all about building the right networks.

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May we live in interesting times…

January 21st, 2009 by Jason McFarlane

The boom is over. And so, too, it seems is the pervading optimism that goes hand in hand with prosperous times. But, paradoxically, did this optimism allow us to rest on our laurels and limit our willingness to be visionary and take risks? 

As pessimism creeps into the private and public sectors with every piece of economic doom and gloom, are we, like fearful snails, heading back into our shells?  Is this the right thing to do?

Recent research by the Kauffman Foundation, a US based economic development think tank, has found that business start-ups that are launched during an economic downturn have a greater chance of long-term survival than those launched during the good times.  

Paul S. Kedrosky, a senior fellow at the foundation, suggests that such start-ups are based on lean, efficient business principles, and a greater determination by founders to succeed. 

I believe such findings are relevant to public sector investment as well.  Much talk in Western Australia revolves around how we “squandered the boom”.  

Well, here’s our chance to develop lean, targeted initiatives that stimulate the economy in the short term, and set the state up to hit the ground running for the long term when we re-emerge.  

We don’t have the luxury of enormous surpluses, so we had better get it right.

Initiatives that support innovation, broaden our ability to solve major world problems, and compete in international markets across a wider range of sectors are essential.  

Reactive policy targeted at interest groups will just mean we squandered the “bust” as well.

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