Innovation Ecosystems

Professor Simon Kaplan

Director, NICTA Queensland

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Overview

• What are innovation ecosystems?• What is innovation?• What is NICTA?• NICTA as an example of building an

innovation ecosystem

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Innovation Ecosystems

• Economies and complex networks of technologies all form ecosystems

• It’s helpful to understand them from this viewpoint

• Then we can get a better grasp on how to encourage innovation

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Ecosystems are complex systems

• Characteristics:– Network structure– Self-organisation– Swarm behaviours– Temporal shear– Co-evolution– Emergent behaviour

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A high-level example: the ‘product space’

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What is innovation?

• All innovations are ‘evolutionary moves’, which means they are:– Incremental from existing capabilities– Governed by time shear– Dependent on underlying network structure to

shape possibilities– A consequence of the ‘swarm behaviours’ of

the players in the innovation ecosystem• Once the move is made, the ecosystem is

changed, which opens up fresh possibilities

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NICTA

• Australia’s National ICT Centre of Excellence

• 5 locations: – Sydney (2), Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane

• University and State Government Partnerships– Key high-quality researchers.

• ~$80m (RMB 550 million) budget per year

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NICTA focuses on

• ICT Research Strengths– Computer Vision– Software Systems– Networks– Control Systems– Optimisation– Machine Learning

• Strategic Business Areas:– Infrastructure,

Transport and Logistics

– Broadband & Digital Economy

– Health– Safety & Security

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Goals

• Research Excellence– Top 10 worldwide in ICT

• Wealth Creation for Australia– Including

• productivity improvements, • new business creation• new economic niches

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NICTA = Innovation Ecosystem?

• Build network of best capability around Australia

• Understands time shear – long-term and short-term investments

• Self-organising & ‘swarming’ – significant group independence to explore– Leads to emergent outcomes rather than top-

down planned activities• We understand our niche target areas

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Impact

• 3 bn mobile phones worldwide run NICTA technologies

• Many airports use our people tracking capabilities

• We are participating in the Australian Bionic Eye project

• We are building a system to support organisational innovation and growth in Queensland (then all of Australia)

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