There is a tired old mantra that periodically echoes along the corridors of Whitehall. It goes something like: “The UK is great at science but poor at turning it into innovation”. Yet since the Conservative…
Emerging economies like India are pushing ahead on innovation measures, while advanced economies see productivity declines.
World Bank/Flickr
The Conference Board’s latest productivity measure shows efficiency remains a problem for the global economy - and interestingly that innovation, despite occurring, may not be helping. The business research…
There’s no one recipe for creating ‘innovation hubs’ but Australia can look to some of the success stories for answers.
Technology image from www.shutterstock.com
Silicon Valley is a bit like the ancient city of Babylon. A confluence of the right geography, right timing, and the right mix in the melting pot allowed them both to thrive. Even the mythological status…
Toyota is the ‘last man standing’ in Australian car manufacturing, but it needs to shift from an ‘us and them’ approach to industrial relations.
Alan Porritt/AAP
The Productivity Commission will today release the preliminary report of its inquiry into Australian automotive manufacturing industries, ensuring the future of car manufacturing in Australia continues…
China: “No, thanks. We don’t want a Nobel peace prize.”
andreasl
“China is at the forefront of medicine and hi-tech and computing.” So said UK Chancellor George Osborne, who recently visited the country. Global tests for 15-year-olds show the youth of Shanghai are comfortably…
Grubby, mean and out for your ideas. Patent trolls are on the prowl.
kewl
For a country that has long been a staunch defender of intellectual property rights, the US has struggled in recent years to get to grips with the menace of a new breed of patent holders, pejoratively…
The Microsoft Kinect, a motion sensor device for the video gaming first released in 2010, is the tip of the iceberg in terms of interactivity, according to researchers at a new social interactive technology lab in Melbourne.
EPA/Oliver Berg
Microsoft’s research arm will partner with the University of Melbourne to explore how people interact socially with technology. But indicators continue to show Australia trailing other countries in terms…
It’s encouraging to see the UK government is finally taking China seriously as a business partner, with David Cameron this week following the parade of ministers who have made the trek to Beijing. There…
It seems there is no end to the smartphone litigation saga. A long-running US court case just reappraised Samsung’s violation of Apple patents. Apple has now been awarded almost US$930m in the dispute…
More workers are ditching the cubicle for a collaborative coworking space.
madrideducacion.es/Flickr
From humble beginnings, the coworking movement has exploded to an estimated 3000 spaces around the world, with hundreds of thousands of people choosing to ditch the home or corporate office in favour of…
There’s been much debate this past month about Britain’s rising gas and electricity bills. Price hikes have followed utility companies’ reports of massive increases in profits, such as Scottish Power which…
BlackBerry smartphones, nice but too late.
Achmad Ibrahim/AP
It is now well known that successful companies often have an annoying habit of missing the next big thing. Harvard’s Clayton Christensen coined it the innovator’s dilemma. He also produced advice on how…
It’s not what you know, it’s what you do with it.
Gold image from www.shutterstock.com
Most agree that it’s worth knowing more about the world and everything in it. Research, in that sense, is intrinsically valuable. But for pragmatic governments, intrinsic scientific or scholarly worth…
Spreading its net wide: Chinese research centre in Antarctica.
petehottelet
Two weeks after he was confirmed as the head of the Politburo Standing Committee last year, Xi Jinping led his new committee colleagues on a tightly-choreographed day trip to the National Museum in Tiananmen…
Research shows channeling the best ideas into new products takes a systematic process.
atomicShed/Flickr
Innovation pays, and the benefits are even greater when organisations develop “systematic innovation” capability, according to a recent study by The University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute…
The tech wars took a major swerve into the leftfield this week. No longer content with updating their phone offerings, companies have come over all James Bond in the hope of hitting upon the next big innovation…
Government funding can be poorly targeted.
PlayStation Europe
The UK government’s Technology Strategy Board has announced (and not for the first time) that it’s putting its weight behind the creative media sector, this time by way of a competition designed to encourage…
Prime minister Kevin Rudd, shaking hands with an employee of the Altona Toyota factory in 2008, sees economic productivity as an important issue.
AAP
Welcome to the **The Conversation Election 2013 State of the Nation* essays. These articles provide in-depth analyses of key policy challenges affecting Australia as the nation heads to the polls. Today…
Research and development election policies are a bit thin on the ground at the moment.
AAP/Science in Public, Paul Phillipson
Building the knowledge economy and a national innovation system should be a priority in the upcoming election but, as of today, only the Greens have released a dedicated research and development policy…