Maximise your opportunities
It is widely accepted that Australia needs an innovative, flexible and creative workforce with the capabilities to enable the country to maximise its opportunities.
That’s according to the Skills and capabilities for Australian enterprise innovation final report, released in June this year by the Australian Academy of Learned Academies. The project sought to examine the way that Australia’s high-performing enterprises identify, manage, build and mix the capabilities to succeed.
Key points out of the research results:
- Innovation requires a diverse mix of skills and capabilities
- Australia can become a more efficient innovator
- Australia’s innovative enterprises thoroughly mix technical and nontechnical skills for innovation
- Innovation requires skills mixing in individuals
- Innovation requires skills mixing across teams and across organisations
- Meeting innovation challenges over time.
They’ve published 12 findings and implications, categorised into the following areas:
- Overarching ones for enterprise, education and government
- Individual skills mixing
- Team and organisational level skills mixing
- Systems level skills mixing.
The appendix has a short description of case study organisations that cover a wide range of organisations. This includes: Anglicare Victoria; Cochlear; CSIRO; Cotton Australia; ING Direct; and global engineering, construction and asset management company, Laing O’Rourke.
Download the comprehensive 144-page report here http://www.acola.org.au/pdf/saf10/Full%20report.pdf
As part of the research, they also conducted a review of the economic literature and published What drives firm innovation? A review of the economics literature which can be downloaded at: http://www.acola.org.au/PDF/SAF10/Webster.pdf
They also produced The role of government, industry and education and research institutions in developing innovation capabilities: key informant interviews, which examined current innovation policy initiatives implemented in Australia. Download it at http://www.acola.org.au/PDF/SAF10/Webster.pdf
Indigo Gold comment:
You will need to devote more than a little time to digest all the information. They’ve done a very thorough job and the reports provide great insights that will give you lots of ideas and inspiration.