“You can always spot the pioneers by the arrows in their backs,” is an adage often uttered when all the best laid plans around a new, new thing don’t pan out. For decades, Australia’s tepid approach to new-to-the-world innovation, enterprise and policy has personified this kind of cultural aversion to risk.
One advantage of being a follower rather than an innovation pioneer is the relative safety of the backseat (or Down Under) vantage point: to look out and study what other countries, jurisdictions and companies are doing as they build and experiment with new technologies, grow new companies, forge new export markets, and shape sustainable industry policy.
National Reconstruction Fund (NRF) Corporation chief executive Ivan Power was coming from that vantage point when he said Australia could look to countries like Germany and Switzerland as exemplars of industrial success despite their higher cost economies.
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