Productivity, Creative Destruction and Innovation Policy - A New Paper from the Australian Business Foundation

PRODUCTIVITY, CREATIVE DESTRUCTION AND INNOVATION POLICY is the latest contribution to its series of Occasional Papers from The Australian Business Foundation. Written by John Foster, Professor of Economics, the University of Queensland and President-elect of the International J.A. Schumpeter Society the paper is thought provoking chiefly because it builds its arguments on the behaviorial aspects of economics. Having commenced brightly, it reverts to the old fashion case study methodology of hard facts and figures putting "behaviour" in its place before coming to a lame conclusion

...Although there is an important role for quantitative incentives in the form of, for example, R&D tax breaks, the essence of innovation policy has to lie in creating the best possible conditions for entrepreneurship to flourish. At the present time, Australian innovation policy, although significant progress has been made, is still lacking in this regard..

It is regrettable discussion on government innovation policy, seems to be dominated by tenured academic economists. The real challenge for innovation policy in Australia is for government and business to establish direct, trusting and meaningful dialogue moving aside academic intermediaries, who are not known for their entrepreneurial skills or practice. Only when these protagonists dance together will this debate have real intent, purpose and possibility.

Otherwise, the best that can be said is this is a nicely articulated paper to read and reflect on.