Triple Innovation Pty Limited

Government grants are geared towards the 3% of Australian businesses who report that they are developing a product or service new to the world. Grants typically include quality of innovation as a key assessment criterion. If you don't score well, you typically do not win a competitive grant. In 2023, the Productivity Commission reported that the quickest and most effective pathway to drive labour productivity in the economy was to support the 97% of Australian businesses who just apply innovation or new ideas (wherever they come from ) to improve their businesses. Whilst noting that these businesses are typically not the recipients of Government support, the question is why not? and what can be done about it...

Another R&D case emphasising that whilst claiming an R&D in Australia is self-assessing, it pays to observe all the elements of statutory eligibility on every occasion...

Do we need another R&D review? Probably not, but if the Albanese Government is going to review R&D again, what should it focus on?

How can you generate chemical-free sanitisers and disinfecting solutions on-site and on-demand. The cleaning industry is rich with chemical products to sanitise and disinfect but there is a lot you can do with simple sodium chloride, water and electrolysis to make a truly chemical and waste-free product that never runs out.... organic chemistry at its best

Is Victorian brown coal dirty or green? With all the bad press brown coal receives it is timely to understand what scientists have always understood. Victorian brown coal has unique physical and chemical properties that make it well suited as a raw material for low emission high value-added products....

With the prospect of large licks of cash spilling from Treasury coffers in the May 2024 federal budget into new value-adding and 'sovereign capability' industries, its timely to put the ruler over any starting hypothesis that Government funding can arrest Australia's declining international competitiveness and lift labour productivity. We all recognise that the world is more unstable than it used to be which has encouraged reshoring of strategically important value-chains under the umbrella of 'sovereign capability', and renewed interest in the role of Government as the 'market-maker' primary financier of next gen 'infant industries'. (This is market-making, not a subsidy). We all know that Government support can catalyse private investment in this scenario. So this is not a bad thing. Yet Government investment that is not also backed by productivity measures, investment in skills, lower energy costs, efficient transport infrastructure and general micro-economic reform that eliminates the things that drive growing businesses offshore is unlikely to shift the dial. So amid all the hype about next gen tech and future jobs, there is an army of innovative businesses today that are just getting on with growing revenue and profits and developing export markets. It is these businesses that are the most deserving of Government investment, much more so than the mega-solar farms or the hydrogen factories of tomorrow. Where and how Government allocates its investment capital in Budget 2024 will reveal much more about its policy priorities.

In praise of incremental innovation

What's the story with nanobubbles? Nothing really except that a Cairns-based company has developed the next generation in nanobubble generation technology - smaller, faster, lower cost, and more elegant - which is what you expect from innovators down under...

Last week economist and iconoclast Mariana Mazzucato completed a series of talks and panel discussions in Sydney and Melbourne following on from her visit in 2018. Best known for her book the Entrepreneurial State and mission-oriented Government industry support, she raises some good points about how Governments provide and focus industry support. Mazzucato argues that Government funding is needed to catalyse investment in new industries where private sector investment is seen as high-risk with uncertain returns over time. Her idea of Government as the maker of new markets defined by 'missions' like the 1960's US Apollo Moon program is 10 years old but still iconoclastic. Her second idea is that Government investment in these big missions needs long-term support.  The United States Apollo program 1960-1973 cost US taxpayers the equivalent of USD$257Bn (2020 dollars).  And with its predecessor program Project Gemini and the lunar robotic lander total cost jumped to USD$537Bn.  Or USD$41Bn per year for 13 years. Big money over a long time. This type of spending is likely beyond the budget envelope for Australian Governments. The jury is still out as to how committed our Governments are to any sensible long-term industry policy. A more pragmatic question is whether Government Departments and Ministerial portfolios Federally and in the States are designed to facilitate effective Government support for our key sectors - agriculture, mining, energy etc. Two recent House of Representative Reports suggest that a whole of sector supply chain focus consolidated under a single accountability is needed to achieve this...

In 2023, the OECD Competition Policy Roundtable released a Background Note confirming the obvious - that more competitive markets are typically also more innovative. Firms are more likely to invest in innovation if they decide they can make enough money to justify that investment. In food and the FMCG markets, unless you are an established big brand, selling volume to support the business often means selling through our concentrated supermarket sector to access the market efficiently. This involves negotiating with Woolworths and Coles who are skilled at sourcing low (supplier squeeze) and selling high. This is not intrinsically illegal depending on how and why it is done. However, when the capacity of suppliers to secure an adequate return to stay in business or where that return is squeezed and limits investment in innovation, this is a heavy negative externality not included in the cost base of supermarket chains... #competition #innovation #supermarkets #entrepreneurs