CSIRO's innovation masterplan

CSIRO has released what it claims to be its masterplan to improve Australia’s record in innovation and help the country respond to global changes and digital disruption.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall is particularly keen to improve Australia’s innovation efficiency, which he describes as “the bang for our buck we get when we transform innovation investment into results”. In this area, Australia currently ranks 81st in the world.

“If that was a team sport ranking, we’d be outraged,” Dr Marshall said. “As a country, we need to work together to improve this result.”

In ‘CSIRO Strategy 2020: Australia’s Innovation Catalyst’, the organisation outlines how it will help boost the country’s innovation performance by becoming a global collaboration hub. CSIRO crowdsourced ideas from more than 7000 people — including research partners, collaborators, staff and the public — to help determine the direction of the strategy.

“For CSIRO the question is, really, what does Australia need?” Dr Marshall said.

“The crowdsourcing helped answer this question by asking people to consider a range of challenges and opportunities ahead and asking how we should respond.”

One of the greatest challenges for Australia has been the difficult road for inventions and technology to go from an idea into the hands of the public.

“To help, we have formed the CSIRO ON program — an initiative to fast-track CSIRO technology and ideas into the market and to get it into people’s hands more quickly,” Dr Marshall said.

“This is what we call ‘breakthrough innovation’, where we will help reinvent existing industries and create new ones.”

CSIRO’s Strategy 2020 will focus on customers and finding ways to solve their technology and innovation challenges. Here, CSIRO staff member Barbara Sowa is at Nissan’s factory, where a partnership with the science agency helped the manufacturer develop new casting technology.

Dr Marshall described innovation as “a team sport”, in which CSIRO must function as a catalyst for growth and change.

“We must form new bonds and collaborate across disciplines, sectors, science and business,” he said. “That is where profound innovation happens — at the intersection of these areas.”

Part of the push for greater collaboration and coordination by CSIRO will be increased co-location with universities and other research organisations and a greater emphasis on international connections.

“We must also be asking who our customers are and if we’re creating the value that they need,” Dr Marshall said. “We work with businesses, industry, governments and communities and we need to find ways to benefit every Australian.”

Top image caption: CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall.