AN INNOVATIVE biogas and water treatment plant, designed and constructed by Australian integrated facility engineers Wiley, has revolutionised a meat processing company’s business, reducing emissions as well as operational costs by more than $1 million a year in the process.

The system has not only saved Australia’s largest meat processing company, JBS Australia, $1 million in its first year of implementation, it has also won Wiley the Queensland Master Builders Association (QMBA) Brisbane Regional Award for Innovation in Environmental Management Construction.

Wiley partnered with JBS Australia to create a self-sustaining biogas facility at its Dinmore facility, capturing cattle emissions to power an existing natural gas-fired boiler plant.

The result led to an 89 percent reduction in the facility’s annual greenhouse gas emissions and a saving of more than $1 million a year on natural gas costs. 

With a 90-year history in creating world-class food manufacturing facilities, Wiley’s people have earned a reputation for developing solutions to complex projects.

Managing director Tom Wiley said the company’s heritage as a global leader in food facilities and plant design, consulting, and construction has provided the Australasian business with unparalleled experience in complex builds and structures that lends itself to projects that others struggle to handle alone.

“Whatever the structural development, some are so complex they need a fresh perspective on them to deliver a practical, effective, and in this case an innovative solution and that’s something Wiley prides itself on,” Mr Wiley said.

“We’re a human-centric organisation, our capabilities lie in the knowledge of our people to problem-solve and work in collaboration with clients and partners to deliver exceptional outcomes.

“Rather than shy away from complex projects, we actively seek them out to continually evolve our thinking, processes and solutions.”

In accepting the award Wiley project director, Graham Harvey said, “This is an industry benchmark demonstrating the reality of environmental processing solutions for heavy emission producers.

“It is a great win for Wiley, JBS Australia and everyone involved.”

The project’s key solutions included construction of a new 20ML covered anaerobic lagoon (CAL); covering of two existing anaerobic lagoons (AL) with high density polyethylene (HDPE) to capture biogas, and then burn the gas through the boiler to provide energy for the plant; installation of a biogas train to pipe biogas from the CALs to a central flare and then to the existing 10MW boiler; an upgrade of waste water treatment plant (WWTP) with a new dissolved air flotation (DAF) unit.

www.wiley.com.au

An in-depth profile of the JBS Dinmore project is available to read and download: http://www.wiley.com.au/experience/biogas-recovery-project-gives-jbs-environmental-and-financial-edge

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AGRICULTURAL ROBOTS invaded the recent Innovation Series event in Brisbane – not in numbers but certainly in scope for their possibilities.

In an event that focused on the economic opportunities Australian agribusiness innovation could generate – titled Agriculture, Robotics & Collaboration a recipe for Global Success? – agricultural robots (agbots) were demonstrated as a new arm of Australian agricultural science rather than science fiction. 

Agbots happen to be a new field of endeavour for Central Queensland farmer Andrew Bate, who has been working in collaboration with QUT and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics to develop robots as, he said, “an enabling technology to do things farmers could not do before”.

The agbot future, as Mr Bate envisions it, involves swarms of small task-specific robots managing vital processes in ways that humans cannot. Mr Bate’s agbot development company, SwarmFarm Robotics, illustrates his vision – swarms of agbots conducting plant and soil maintenance and improvement tasks such as bug and weed removal, at any hour of the day or night and in any weather conditions – superseding current chemical treatment systems.

Mr Bate said the ‘big’ automation programs for Australian farmers had gone about as far as they could go, with ploughing, planting and harvesting systems now so big that they created a range of counterproductive problems of their own. In fact, it was while considering how to deal with the deep tracks cut across his land from these massive systems that Mr Bate began to contemplate better solutions through agbots.

The traditional methods for boosting production, such as chemical treatments and doing everything on an ever-larger scale, were not cutting it anymore, Mr Bate said. He said Australia, because of its previous herbicide use, now had the “unenviable record” of having the second highest number of herbicide resistant weed species of any country.

“The cost (of extra herbicide use) to Australia’s grain industry alone is estimated to be $200 million a year,” Mr Bate said. “The technology that pushed agriculture for the past 20 years has plateaued. Along the way we have forgotten about slow farming – slow, accurate, precise – we have been dining out on a fast food burn.

“Thinking about this was how I got onto the world of agriculture, robotics and collaborations,” he said.

Mr Bate showed Innovation Series attendees images of massive modern farming equipment, including a 300 horsepower, 36m wide spraying machine used on his family’s Bendee Farm. He pointed out that every second of its operation that machine was passing over 28,000 individual plants.

“All equipment like this is the same,” he said. “You are dealing with wheel widths and there are limits caused by the compaction of the soil and the destruction of crop that results,” Mr Bate said.

 “Up until now, more efficient has meant larger and larger, but it’s wrecking the crop production. I’m convinced that every time we go bigger we go backwards.”

Mr Bate began developing a plan for swarms of small robots which could, if necessary, operate on an individual plant improvement basis. He felt the capability to do this was the Holy Grail of farm productivity and long-term sustainability.

“We want to slow down, assess every individual plant and tend to its exact needs on a plant-by-plant basis. This may mean applying fertiliser or fungicide only to plants that really need it, rather than applying treatment to entire areas of the field.

“Small robots also reduce the soil compaction (of current large machinery). We are talking about machines that weigh a couple of hundred kilos rather than a 21 tonne spray rig.”

Mr Bate embarked on a global search for such technologies, focusing on the United States where, he figured, there must be developments that could be brought back to Australia and adapted. Most of that research turned out to be directed at military and mining applications. He met with Hugh Durant-White from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics – now chief executive of NICTA – who introduced him to a fledgling program at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, which was set to lead the world in agricultural robotics development.  

Mr Bate’s swarm robotics system could form the experiential cornerstone of new QUT research area, headed by Peter Corke, it was realised, and an Australian Research Centre grant was successfully sought. 

Mr Bate said robotics had the potential to dramatically improve the way we produce food, from managing microbiology in the soil through to how sunlight is absorbed into plant leaves.

“This is pull research, not push research,” Mr Bate said, describing his own family farming business as always being “an early adopter” of new technologies. The difference this time was that he was determined to fit the new technology to meet the farming problem, rather than the other way around.

“From the earliest days of industrialisation in agriculture, farmers have talked about the Holy Grail of farming – the driverless tractor,” Mr Bate said. “But in the modern world of agribusiness, the concept of a driverless tractor is already obsolete.”

He was also not overly enthusiastic about drone technologies, which was what many people associated with future farm automation.

“What are we going to use them for?” Mr Bate said. “Precision farming or ‘precision ag’ has been around for more than 20 years. The idea was that we could collect all this crop data and use it to better manage areas of our paddock. Big data may be a new thing in business, but we got it 20 years ago. We have been collecting data – crop yield, grain protein, near infra red images, satellist images, EM (electron microscope) scans – all sorts of data. Most farmers have got hard drives full of this stuff. Lots of pretty maps, but very few are using it for anything useful.

“Pretty much any data that we can get from drones we can already get from a piloted plane at a competitive cost. A thousand dollars will buy a lot of flight time in a piloted aircraft to collect whatever data you want, but few farmers are willing to do this. Still, everyone is excited by drones to collect more data that no-one seems to be bothered to use at the moment.

“More data doesn’t equal more productivity – we already have information overload.”

Mr Bate was more concerned with the direct application of robots to precision tasks.

“What can we do with robots to increase yield, efficiency and improve the environmental impact of farming? The first thing people tend to say to me is that robots will save us so much on wages – but I don’t think so,” he said.

“We already have the labour saving devices now – they are the 36m spray rigs, the 60m planters … It’s getting pretty lonely on the farm – we only have about one person per 5000 acres now, and I don’t think we can do with any less people.”

Instead, Mr Bate said, his research of robotics for agriculture pointed towards agbots that were small, simple, inexpensive with very few moving parts and robust electronic systems. These agbots are all about helping farmers, big or small, to boost production and quality, he said.

SwarmFarm agbots are small, simple machines that do simple tasks very well. They are at a cost level accessible to all farmers and are able to be adapted to local conditions – plus, importantly, they are scalable.

“While governments in developing nations are eager to become self-sufficient, or at least produce as much food as they can, other nations are becoming more concerned about sustainability, environmental impact and the quality and health of the food they are consuming,” Mr Bate said.

“A potato farmer in Russia will want to have robots perform different tasks to a potato farmer in Victoria.”

He described a new microwave technology developed at the University of Melbourne that can be used to kill weeks accurately and efficiently. This is the kind of technology that SwarmFarm agbots could utilise, identifying weeds, ‘frying’ them, then moving on to the next one. Suitably powered, such robots could spend their entire time in the paddock.

“Even more exciting, I think, are the ideas that we have not even thought of yet – ideas that we will start having when they are out in the field and people start thinking more laterally about applications for robots,” Mr Bate said.

Mr Bate and his SwarmFarm team are working with two QUT PhD students, Patrick Ross and Andrew English, along with project leader Dr David Ball. The project is also partnered with the Australian Centre for Field Robotics with Dr David Fysh and PhD student Tom Patten.

While most of the work so far has centred on object avoidance systems and swarm techniques, progress has been rapid and the project is just months away from releasing model prototypes. Mr Bate is eager to see Queensland lead the world in swarm farming agbots.

“Robots will give us increased yields, increased efficiencies and better environmental outcomes. Simple.”

CSIRO SEES GROWING OPPORTUNITIES

As the world ‘centre of gravity’ for nations’ gross domestic product (GDP) shifts from what was decades ago the Middle East to the balance point of India and China in the decades to come, Australia will be presented with a magnificent opportunity in agribusiness.

That is where research by the CSIRO points, according to its Futures Division leader, Stefan Hajkowicz, who focused at the Innovation Series on the CSIRO-identified megatrends as they affect Australian agribusiness. 

The development of robotics and farm automation also fits directly into the strategic view of Australia’s agribusiness future, Dr Hajkowicz told the Innovation Series event.

He said the kind of automation and artificial intelligence that will come through to assist the agribusiness sector will create opportunities yet to be imagined.

Dr Hajkowicz gave as an example of such possibilities the IBM DeepQA team experiment in computing which eventually produced a robotic intelligence that competed with, and often defeated, the US’s Jeopardy! television quiz champions.

Named ‘Watson’, the computer intelligence did achieve its aim – analysing natural language questions and content well enough and fast enough to compete and win – and now it is being re-assigned to examine other fields.

“When it first began in 2005 it was a non-starter, it was hopeless, and it couldn’t get there,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “But in the space of four or five years they had improved it so much that it could beat almost all of the contestants.

“Now a computer can always win at Jeopardy! no matter what, and soon this thing is going to be plugged into the health care system so that a nurse can talk to it in natural language and ask it questions for a complex diagnoses. There will be a time pretty soon where it gets plugged into Siri and it then starts to significantly change what the power of our iPhone is.”

Dr Hajkowicz said the next phase could be to set such computers to examine challenges in agribusiness – and the day may come in which such powerful computing would be available to farmers to assist with local problem solving.

Dr Hajkowicz likened Australia’s challenges in areas such as resources and agribusiness to that which the famous US steel centre, Pittsburg, overcame after the collapse of its industry in the 1980s. Pittsburg transitioned – painfully, but successfully, “from steel maker to steel technology,” he said.

He said as the steel markets collapsed in the 1980s, Pittsburg turned to the intellectual assets it had in metallurgical research and steel making techniques to make the transition.

“It went from selling ingots to ideas,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “That kind of transition is there for the Australian economy, potentially.”

He said such a transitional opportunity directly applied to the agribusiness sector, where Australia had a golden opportunity to develop and export its technologies and systems to the world.

From Dr Hajkowicz’s research, Australia could quickly take advantage of global trends in food production, but it had to do more than just produce more food. Australian farmers had to understand the direction of food requirements in developing markets and be a step ahead of those trends.

For example, he said, “China is now into a high protein (intake) demand area – and this takes a lot more land” than, say rice production. CSIRO research showed clearly that as communities develop economically, their demand for more protein content, and better quality foods, accelerates. China has reached that point in the past decade.

An indication of the challenges ahead came from the dramatic hikes on food prices that came about in 2008, Dr Hajkowicz said, tracked by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

This was a period in which the unintended consequences of turning grain production over to supporting biofuels development contributed to hundreds of millions of people slipping into malnutrition.

CSIRO and UN Food and Agriculture Organization research showed food prices had been relatively stable until 2008, when energy prices went up, biofuel production soared and that meant cuts to food output. Another factor at the time was export restrictions which caused panic buying in some markets.

Dr Hajkowicz said one research set attributed the 30 percent spike in food prices almost entirely to biofuel subsidies, while rising oil prices also fed into that 2008 food price shock. Food prices, he said, are inextricably connected to oil prices.

“Modern agriculture, we know, in effect turns oil into food,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “We need it for machinery and for fertiliser (production) – while urbanisation played a role, but not a particularly significant one – and the rise in incomes in China became a factor.”

Dr Hajkowicz said a very worrying trend that also emerged at the time was speculation in food futures derivatives markets at levels not seen before.

Of further concern, and something which should always be on Australia’s radar, was that high food prices destabilise communities and can lead to armed conflict. Research into the links between global food prices and deaths due to riots and protests show a clear correlation.

“Some of those incidents show 10,000 plus deaths, such as in Libya for example,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “The research shows that above a certain food price we are assured of getting serious riots with mortality and those riots are then connected to the destabilisation of the political systems, the dysfunction of markets and whole lot of political and community breakdown as a consequence.

“So high food prices have an impact beyond the humanitarian level – they destabilise our work and are an underlying source of armed conflict.”

The upside, Dr Hajkowicz said, was that high food prices caused a reaction to meet the need, although with a lag, and he pointed out how Australian grain farmers responded rapidly and profitably to the global shortages of late last decade.

Dr Hajkowicz said this was an area that needed to be considered by the G20 countries and he suggested it was time for the G20 to develop an open “free and fair” food market, where there were no distortions. He said the market forces left alone had proven over time to be self-stabilising.

Australia should probably look to New Zealand for a lead on its agribusiness opportunities, Dr Hajkowicz said, because New Zealand and in particular the dairy farmers co-operative Fonterra, had managed to develop a national brand that ‘owned’ fresh and nutritious food – especially in the dairy sector and particularly in China.

“China is becoming a big food importer,” Dr Hajkowicz said, “but not everything. If you are trying to sell them garlic, you won’t do well, because most of the garlic we actually sell in Australia comes from China.

“However, if you are selling them dairy, wine, olive oil, tropical fruit, grains, chicken and pork and seafood, you are going to do incredibly well, because these are big growth markets.

“I don’t think we are coming close in Australia tapping into and connecting with these massive growth markets. China is the standout, but there is India, there is South Korea, there is Singapore … there is a lot of movement across the Asia region. I think this is one of the opportunities we are letting slip away.”

Fonterra, however, has seized the opportunity and is a clear example to Australia on how it can be done. Interestingly, Dr Hajkowicz said, Fonterra probably succeeded because it was one large company and could react decisively, swiftly, and all the while maintaining exceptional levels of quality in all its products.

Its big opportunity was the domestic poisoned baby milk scare in China, which drove parents to look for a reliable clean and green alternative offshore. New Zealand’s Fonterra delivered and has innovated ever since.

“Australia can position itself to meet all of those areas, if we are smart about it.”

“The challenge is for Australian agriculture to start to do this,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “Pick the right products … which the new emerging Asian markets can get in to.”

Dr Hajkowicz said the problem was that Australian agribusiness was “not on the front foot”.

“Australian agriculture is good at what it does, it’s highly efficient but it is a price taker. We take what price the world is giving is and shovel the stuff off, but we don’t go out there and actively build new markets opportunities.”

Health is going to be the major driver of what people are going to choose for food, according to CSIRO’s Megatrends research.

“For the food of the future and what people are going to want to eat, health is going to be so much more of an important driver,” Dr Hajkowicz said. Developed societies had only recently become aware of a tapering off in life expectancy due to the rise in Type 2 Diabetes, which can cut 10 to 15 years off a person’s life. This pointed to a substantial rise in the use of functional foods to improve health, Dr Hajkowicz said.

An example was CSIRO’s own development of a functional food, BarleyMax.

“We know from research over time that wholegrain cereals reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke in males by about 20 percent,” Dr Hajkowicz said.

“Organic food (popularity) is also growing, and this is another dimension to the experiential component – we want to know if it’s fair trade, we want to know the environmental footprint, and we want to have a feel good moral factor about it when we buy it.”

Dr Hajkowicz said the world was experiencing unprecedented income growth and that had a major impact on the purchase of food as people became wealthier.

“Protein is getting on the menu – as we get more income growth we want more protein,” he said. “What’s one of those? Fish. Asian people do eat more fish protein than the rest of the world.”

He also pointed out studies over 30 years revealed an inverse proportion of  myocardial infarction – heart attacks – in people as fish consumption grew.

“Health is a much more important driver of global food now and into the future,” Dr Hajkowicz said. “We can respond to these needs via functional foods.”

“The supply and demand factors are in place to provide a boom condition for Australian agriculture. If we are smart about it, we know how to connect with these markets.

“The big one is the consumer demand for healthy food, plus also the feel-good factor and the whole emotional connection to food.

“Australia can get a quality differentiator into those markets and can crack it. Food security is going to be important for global stability.

“Food ethics are important because food is all about making us healthy and happy.”

Australia needs to develop a quality positioning on its food and agricultural products, he said.

Dr Hajkowicz said attending a recent Diversify Mackay forum, in which strategies were put forward to diversify the regional economy away from resources dependence, highlighted the bright future for food and agriculture.

“At the Diversify Mackay forum I can remember thinking at the time that what we really need is a Diversify Australia approach at a higher level. I think that is a challenge – and the point we are at.”

*

The Innovation Series, started in Queensland in 2004, is a unique Australian forum convening researchers, industry and government to address and discuss leading developments in sustainability, while also encouraging the exchange of ideas and inviting new collaborations.

The Innovation Series is organised by Zernike Australia and partnered by the Australian Institute for Commercialisation, QUT, Fisher Adams Kelly, AusIndustry and Business Acumen magazine.

The next Innovation Series Brisbane event is on August 8 at the Stamford Plaza hotel covering the topic Big Data: A Catalyst for Business Success. The event features Quantium director Tony Davis and SIBA chair in spatial information at QUT, Tim Foresman.

www.innovationseries.com.au

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SUBSCRIBER EXTRA / 

IF MORE business leaders had heard the salient points of speakers at Innovation Series events in 2013, much of the debate raging across Australia right now would be taking a more constructive path.

But those who did attend Innovation Series events at least gained perspectives that can be applied to their own businesses and spheres of influence to help navigate extremely challenging times.

At a July Innovation Series event in Melbourne, Digital Business insights CEO John Sheridan explained the disruptive nature of the digital revolution for Australian business and demonstrated its dramatic impact already on the health services industries. Mr Sheridan’s localised insights, drawn from a digital business and economy project he is conducting with Victorian councils and Regional Development Australia, gave a series of signposts for business leaders to adapt to their own situations and industries.

Taking a helicopter view of the digital revolution for Australia,  head of CSIRO’s Digital Productivity Services Flagship, Ian Oppermann pointed out at the same event how better broadband for Australia through the NBN could be a catalyst for new digital business mobility and systems innovation. He gave examples of how digital innovation would have an immediate positive impact on the healthcare sector, leaving Innovation Series attendees with ideas on how to adapt such innovation to their own sectors – or run the risk of being left behind. 

Another such example came from another Innovation Series Melbourne event which tackled Australia’s challenged manufacturing sector – as it turned out, just prior to Ford’s announcement that it would cease manufacturing in this country, and about six months ahead of Holden’s – where three manufacturing industry leaders outlined the real risk to Australia from losing hi-tech manufacturing: a severe blow to entire sector’s ability to innovate.

Manufacturing experts Albert Goller, Goran Roos and Jim Walker all gave examples that demonstrated Australia must develop a much stronger a future in manufacturing if it wants to maintain its lifestyle advantages and improve communities.

Jim Walker, the CEO of the Co-operative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology (AutoCRC), lamented the drift to Australian companies designing here, but moving to manufacture offshore – and both Ford and Holden now fall into that category.

“The big problem is that when you manufacture in another country, the next innovation comes from that country,” Mr Walker said. “The real innovation comes out of manufacturing. Long term R&D follows manufacturing. That does not seem to be widely understood in Australia.”

Mr Walker is well qualified to discuss the challenges facing manufacturers ‘at the coalface’ having for five years headed up QMI Solutions Limited, a company dedicated to improving the Australian manufacturing industry. Before joining QMI Solutions, he worked at Boeing Australia for nine years as general manager of Boeing Network Enabled Systems (NES),the business unit responsible for developing many of the nation's key defence communications and air defence assets.

Manufacturing Industry Innovation Precinct chairman, Albert Goller – a former chairman and managing director of Siemens Ltd in Australia and New Zealand – pointed out that the real opportunities in manufacturing in Australia resided in the small and medium sector and especially family companies which were in business for the long term. In that respect, he said, Australia’s opportunities could be seen as similar to Germany’s Mittlestand sector, which underpins the German economy – a point reaffirmed at the Innovation Series by Mr Walker.

Like Mr Goller, honorary professor of the Warwick Business School (UK), Goran Roos demonstrated how economies with even higher cost bases than Australia, such as Sweden and Switzerland, relied on manufacturing for their high standards of living and as the leading contributor to economic wealth.

Prof. Roos pointed out that Sweden mined its own iron ore – at much higher cost than Australia – created high grade metals that were difficult to obtain elsewhere, created products such as hi-tech tooling systems that were then employed in Sweden to make high quality industrial machinery which, in turn, was used to develop robotics used in car, truck and aircraft manufacturing.

Mr Walker also pointed out a fact rarely acknowledged: “Regional Australia is a hotbed of innovation,” he said.

INNOVATION MIND SET

The insights offered through the Innovation Series often spark collaborations through people who meet at the events – and no wonder with the innovative mind-set that permeates the series.

One who has been on both sides of the fence is Digital Business insights CEO, John Sheridan.

“The Innovation Series luncheons offer organisations a unique opportunity to stay abreast of innovations, new ideas and breakthroughs in industry, business, science and academia,” Mr Sheridan said. “Over the last few years, I have gained many valuable insights into subjects that are rarely covered in the mainstream media, yet are of critical importance to Australian CEOs and management teams. Vision, inspiration and networking on the menu at every luncheon.”

The series remains one of the few opportunities in Australian business to exploit the serendipity of a room full of like-minded innovative professionals and high level government staffers.

“There is nothing that is going to stand between me and attending the Innovation Series,” said Enterprise Connect North Brisbane Moreton Bay Innovative Region facilitator, Tony Krimmer. “With its incredible array of fascinating presenters – all at the cutting edge of achievement – this program of events provides an indispensable insight into a diversity of business game-changers.

“Actually, ‘attending’ is not the right word – the Innovation Series provides connections and conversations, with easy access to the speakers – they’re not protected from us. And, it’s a chance to mix and meet with national and international business executives, researcher ‘boffins of repute’ and to button-hole government decision makers.

“Being at the Innovation Series is being in the right place at the right time,” Mr Krimmer said.

Another who attends at every opportunity is BioPharmaceuticals Australia business development manager, Brett Whitecross, who remarked, “I thoroughly enjoy the Innovation Series luncheons – excellent opportunities to network and interact with representatives from a range of high-tech disciplines. I never miss them.”

A business leader and angel investor who has been involved with the series for many years – and compered many events in recent years – is Innovative Business Concepts CEO, John Kapeleris.

“The Innovation Series is an excellent forum to promote and showcase new ideas and business opportunities at the forefront of Australian innovation,” Mr Kapeleris said.

“I have found the Innovation Series a key driver encouraging collaborative networking between industry and academia.

“As a result I have established numerous collaborative business opportunities that have the potential to benefit the Australian economy through the creation of partnerships, new ventures and job growth.”

The Innovation Series has long been credited by business leaders as a catalyst for ‘bigger picture’ thinking.

“The Innovation Series has a remarkable ability to combine thought-provoking topics with speakers that provide practical ideas to take back and apply in my business,” BigPic and Your Commercial Foundations principal, Fiona MacNee said.

“ As a micro-business, the Innovation Series events offer an invaluable tool to ensure I engage with the macro issues that affect us all together, with the opportunity to learn how innovative businesses of five to 5000 employees are tackling these challenges.”

THINKING GLOBAL CHALLENGES

A good example of how the Innovation Series has helped lift the view of many business leaders was the Sydney session which focused on innovation to navigate global challenges.

Three global leaders in innovation – Vlada Majanovic from Cisco Systems in Silicon Valley, Australian CSIRO principal scientist Dr Stefan Hajkowicz and Deloitte Australia chief strategy officer, Gerhard Vorster – urged Australian business leaders to re-think their approaches to innovation in response to existing global conditions – and, perhaps more importantly, those anticipated to come.

All three, using a wide variety of examples, including those of the most successful  technology innovation area of all, Silicon Valley – urged Australian organisations to look long and hard at what they are doing, how they are doing it and – vitally – who is driving their organisations forward, in order to bring through game-changing innovation.

From Mr Vorster’s experience, opportunity usually emerges from “going back to basics” and examining internal and external perceptions of their businesses. A key skill of the business leader was in spotting impending profound change – such as the hardly-anticipated rise in ICT capability in India, which has had a dramatic global effect.

“It happened all right,” he said. “And once something like this happens, you don’t go back to how it was before.”

Mr Vorster said in too many ways Australian organisations were looking back longingly “at how it used to be” rather than embracing the opportunities to innovate and change. Australia had to up-shift its mind set, he said, away from the attitudes that hold it back, summing things up with an ironic phrase: “That may be okay in practice, but it will never work in theory.”

In his experience, successful innovators looked to the restless ones in their organisations who were tired of the old ways and were continually looking for better methods.

“These are often the troublemakers, dissatisfied with the status quo, who are usually the most innovative,” Mr Vorster warned.

He said Australia was facing a crisis in this regard, as recent international surveys showed that about 74 percent of companies, internationally, regarded themselves as being innovative. Yet the figure was just 55 percent in Australia.

The future was with those innovators “who do it, not prove it,” he said.

Vlada Majanovic said many Australian organisations and entrepreneurs had decent reputations for being innovative, but there was much it could learn from Silicon Valley, both in what to adopt and, perhaps, some elements to avoid.

Mr Majanovic, who is senior director for the Strategic Transformations division of Cisco Services Sales, said there was no doubt Silicon Valley was “the most successful innovation area” in the world “and the one that has made the most money”.

“Basically, in this context, there is Silicon Valley – and everyone else.”

He said the ways to fund innovative technology start-ups ranged from government grants, to business-enabled systems such as the IOS developer program and on to education initiatives including technology development centres, boot camps and start-up labs.

“It is all part of the ecosystem,” Mr Majanovic said, “but then there is Silicon Valley.”

He said Silicon Valley was so successful – and so powerful – that few Australian tech. start-ups could avoid it and none could ignore it.

It was a successful but imperfect system that revolved around “Build. Fund. Execute. Exit. Repeat …” Mr Majanovic said.

“All follow this path,” he said, “be quick, be quick …swim or sink fast. That is the thing. It is unique – people focus on IT – and there is very much an exit focus. People that are trusted are onboard fast.

“It is extremely local. In many cases companies will go from start-up to IPO in two years.”

He said it was ironic that Silicon Valley operates in a way that is opposite to the high technologies it promotes. He described the region as “a people network in 30sqkm”.

But Mr Majanovic criticised Silicon Valley for its short-term mentality.

He described one of the ongoing problems as “money does not understand technology. There is lots of hype,” he said, but a lack of focus on long-term value.

“I call it Wall St at its worst,” Mr Majanovic said.

Mr Majanovic acknowledged the views of Deloittes’ Mr Vorster in this space, saying, “If you cannot execute, you have nothing.”

Mr Majanovic said innovators and technology start-ups should remember that “the world is flat in the software business”.

INNOVATE OR PERISH?

Taking a higher level view was vital for business leaders and innovators, according to CSIRO scientist Dr Stefan Hajkowicz who highlighted the ‘mega trends’ Australian organisations must navigate.

He gave the issue of innovation a sense of great urgency, calling it Australia’s “innovation imperative”.

“Australia must make the jump … or it is stuffed,” he said. Competitors are already occupying what has been Australia’s economic and industrial space.

CSIRO research has identified key Mega Trends and ‘Mega Shocks’ that will directly impact Australian business in its report Our Future World: An analysis of global trends, shocks and scenarios.

Dr Hajkowicz said the biggest single shift going on right now is the GDP shift from the developed to the developing world.

This was highlighted by the fact that 1.02 billion Asians will soon be classified as ‘middle class’ mainly in China and South East Asia.

The traditional leading East Asian economy, Japan, will have more than 40 percent of its population aged over 70 by 2020, and other developed economies are not far behind.

The US and Australian economies are similarly being weighed down by health costs for ageing populations.

“Retirement may cease to exist in the future,” Dr Hajkowicz posed.

But in this, like other Mega Trends, Dr Hajkowicz sees opportunity for innovative Australian businesses, such as medical technology developers.

Plus, he said, healthier ageing populations have a greater propensity for travel and that was an opportunity for Australia.

Australia’s tourism sector, which has been hit by high dollar costs, could also be on the verge of a boom from new markets being created by the young and active Asian middle class. In fact, CSIRO has identified a market called Flashpackers that Australia may exploit – people who are active, cashed up and ready to travel to places on the recommendations of friends through social media, such as Facebook.

The CSIRO-identified Mega Trends also bode well for Australia’s agribusiness sector, with developing countries focused on providing food security. Australia’s potential in agribusiness is only limited by water availability, Dr Hajkowicz said.

Meanwhile Australia’s minerals sector may be tapering off, but its natural gas industries are only just starting to produce and may provide an energy advantage for Australia. Mining may go to cheaper source countries, but Australia’s innovative mining services may yet benefit, if companies can make the shift internationally.

“Growth for Australia may instead come from selling the know-how of mining.” Dr Hajkowicz said.

While Australian organisations may need to follow new business overseas, Australia will surely benefit from the fact that the weight of economic development is coming our way.

Dr Hajkowicz said in 1980 the world’s economic centre of gravity was in the mid Atlantic – but by 2030 that epicentre will be somewhere between India and China.

“Again, the big thing to watch is the GDP shift to the developing world,” he said.

That means business opportunity is inexorably coming Australia’s way. All it takes now is business flexibility and innovation.

There’s that word again.

The next Innovation Series even is in Brisbane on April 1, featuring Queensland Chief Scientist Geoff Garrett, CSIRO Futures leader Stefan Hajkowicz and SwarmFarm Robotics director Andrew Bate highlighting the latest innovations in the food and agriculture industries addressing the title, Agriculture, Robotics and Collaboration a recipe for global success?

Dr Garrett will outline the resources available to support the Australian agribusiness industry as one of the world’s most efficient producers; Dr Hajkowicz will present on the future of food; while Mr Bate looks into the many benefits of utilising ‘agbots’ to improve productivity, efficiencies and increase yields.

www.innovationseries.com.au

ends

POSTED MARCH 2014.

ONE of the ‘quiet achievers’ of Australian engineering, e3k, has launched a medical device that is likely to bring its brand, which has been behind so many successful Australian-developed products, to the forefront.

Last year e3k commercialised its medical device, named Agilitas, which was wholly developed by e3k over five years. Agilitas is now on commercial sale through Bright Devices Pty Ltd, part of the Brisbane-based Gilmore Engineers Group that also created e3k in 2001.  

Agilitas is a ‘smart’ visual cueing device designed to assist people suffering primarily from ‘freeze of gait’ associated with Parkinson’s Disease. It is developing a worldwide market with first units delivered Australia-wide, as well as to Brazil and Boston, USA.

Like many products it has contributed to in the 12 years since Gilmore Engineers Pty Ltd adopted the brand name e3k, tag-lined ‘Engineering 3000 – new technologies for the new millennium’ it is expected to beome wildly successful.

For example, this year Atlantis Resources Limited – a company grown from the water power generation technology developed and tested in the Clarence River, NSW by e3k in the years 2000 to 2004 – will list on the London Stock Exchange. The world-patented technology, now part-owned by Morgan Stanley, relates to underwater tidal renewable power generation turbines.

In 2012, e3k was the recipient of four Engineering Excellence Awards from Engineers Australia. 

E3k was a national winner, drawn from hundreds of entries Australia-wide, and contested by 42 division finalists in Canberra in November 2012, as well as taking three awards in the Newcastle Division, including the GHD Overall Winner, and the UGL Innovation in Sustainable Engineering Award for engineering design and testing of the SeaUrchin marine power generator. 

This was obtained in collaboration with Elemental Energy Technologies Ltd, ATSA Defence Services Pty Ltd and RPC Technologies Pty Ltd. 

In 2010, Gilmore Engineers received an Australian International Design Award from Good Design Australia, in the Business and Technology Category, for its contribution to the development of the FLAT hydraulic stabilising mechanism for use on any item with legs, skids or footings. The product is now available for sale through outlets worldwide.

In 2008, the mechanical fastening system known as ‘Joinlox’, to which e3k had contributed during development, won Invention of the Year on the ABC Television New Inventors program. It is now commercially available from Joinlox Pty Ltd, supported by Xstrata Technology, who signed a global licensing agreement in 2010.

In 2001, e3k received a High Commendation and was a finalist in 2010 in the Engineers Australia Queensland Division Engineering Excellence Awards, for projects sponsored by the Queensland Academy of Sport – which produced equipment used in winning a silver medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics – and Leighton Contractors Pty Ltd for work on live measurement of the energy efficiency of mining haul trucks with an aim of reducing fuel consumption and emissions, respectively.

Director and president of e3k and Gilmore Engineers, Duncan Gilmore said the successes were a tribute to the diligence and innovation that e3k’s teams had applied over many years to these challenging projects.

“This list of commercial successes and awards is indicative of the level of attention received by all products which are subjected to development by e3k,” Dr Gilmore said.

www.e3k.com

ends 

POSTED MAY 2014.