The newly formed Technology Council of Australia, which includes the nation’s largest and most successful tech companies as founding members, will sponsor the top prize – the Australian Hero award – at the InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence.
The Australian Hero award recognises the individual – or leaders of a company – whose ambition and drive has resulted in a game-changing innovation, a fabulous commercial success or social impact, delivering prosperity and well-being to the nation.
The award is selected from a small elite pool of extraordinary leaders that have already won one of the ten industry categories.
The Australian Hero is the most prestigious of the awards to be handed out during a black-tie gala at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in The Rocks in Sydney on the evening of December 1. You can book your ticket for this industry celebration by clicking here.
The Tech Council’s chief executive officer Kate Pounder said the organisation was “thrilled” to be on board, and highlighted the growing importance of the technology sector as a job creator, and as a support to other industries across the economy.
“The tech sector is now a major part of the Australian economy. It’s equivalent to the third biggest industry and seventh biggest employer,” Ms Pounder said. “It’s a huge jobs engine with 860,000 people working in tech-related jobs, and 65,000 tech jobs created during the pandemic alone.:
“Today, the most common form of R&D in Australia is ICT applications, highlighting that how we innovate and create value in our economy is diversifying and changing with the times,” she said.
“In the last couple of decades, we’ve created over 100 tech companies with a 100m+ valuation. Some of them – like Atlassian and Canva – are now equivalent in value to top ten companies in the country.”
“Excitingly, the calibre and diversity of organisations nominated this year shows we can keep on producing global tech companies right here in Australia, particularly in areas like B2B SaaS, FinTech, RegTech, quantum computing and deep tech.”
“We now have the opportunity to be a regional tech hub – we want to work with industry, governments and other stakeholders to make that opportunity a reality,” Ms Pounder said.
“Doing that will deliver big dividends for Australia: we can have a million tech jobs by 2025 and create $250 billion in GDP by 2030 from tec- related activity.”
InnovationAus publisher Corrie McLeod welcomed the Tech Council’s support of the Australian Hero award.
“The creation of the Technology Council of Australia has put a spotlight on the home-grown innovation talent we have here, and on the contribution the sector makes across the whole economy,” Ms McLeod said.
“It has started a mainstream conversation about just how big the tech industry is in this country, and just how much innovation and entrepreneurial talent is coming through the system,” she said.
“We are delighted that the Tech Council has put its name to the Australian Hero award. We know from the calibre of the finalists in all ten categories that the 2021 Australian Hero award will go to a leader – and their company – who is well worth celebrating.”
The InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Innovation Excellence will be presented on the evening of December 1. You can read more about these awards, our judges and our advisory board by visiting the awards website.
You can book you ticket to the event here.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.