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Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a workshop session / forum being run by the Australian Business Foundation and hosted by Deloitte.

The session was about the R+D Concessions Tax and innovation opportunities in general.  

I attended as I had been invited by a colleague who sits on the Board of the Foundation. I figured that it would be a good place to find out about some of the things that might advantage some of our great Nesso clients.  I found that and more.

I learnt about the current state of play with regard to R+D Tax Concessions and more importantly about the proposed rates etc.  This will take effect from the 1st of July this year, provided it goes through the senate.  I guess that means it will be retrospective.

There were people from major companies, small innovators and research and education areas.  The Honorable Senator Kim Carr spoke as well.

All in all there was a serious amount of brainpower on show.

As someone who is not particularly tall, over the years I had concerns every time I entered a room because invariably the other people were Taller, Thinner Smarter which correspondingly meant that I was Shorter Fatter and Dumber, so I was confronted all day with a lot of very smart people and it would have been easy to becoming a shrinking violet.

I am pleased to say that during the day those feelings of inadequacy did not drive my conversations.

It did however present me with an opportunity to challenge the myths and presuppositions of elements of what I call the Intellectual community, that for anything to occur it has to happen in the bowels of a University or a Research Institute and that Industry is only the implementation team of the Academic’s inventions.

During the summary session there seemed to be an underpinning theory coming across that Innovation is largely coming out of research institutes and by extension universities.     I personally take exception to that theory and also gleaned that many people consider the only R+D worthy of discussion is in the manufacturing and or environmental sector.  

That is not to denounce those sectors for they do amazing things and we need to keep working to ensure that they continue to grow, challenge, innovate and refine.  It is just that there is so much being done in areas other than those considered to be more sexy/ worthy.  

I was at a meeting one day and the topic of innovation came up and someone mentioned that innovation does not have to be something earth shattering, it could be as simple as changing colours to be more relevant to an audience.  The example this person used was  of a manufacturer of tool boxes who had always made grey or blue boxes and when looking at potential markets realised that women in the DIY sector was growing.  They capitalised on that by marketing a pink tool box.  How many they sold is not the issue. The fact that they identified an opportunity for improvement and responded to that improvement opportunity by developing the product in PINK was and remains to me to be an innovation.  Dare I say it that the manufacturer may be from a university/ intellect perspective (I really don’t know).  I will assert however that that particular innovation did not come from a Research Institute’s lab.  It came from acknowledging what someone needed and responding to that need. 

Innovation could come from looking at process and just change by degrees.  Again not a research lab.  

How many great process innovations come from the production line because what is being done just does not make sense.  It is likely that the person on the production line does not hail from one of our many exceptional learning institutes, although that is possible today in our borderless world where many migrants are university trained and unable to secure employment in their chosen field.

Back to Frida’s session, I met with one of the attendees as we left.  Claire Smith who is an academic works at Flinders University in Adelaide and we spoke briefly about my distinction between Intellect and Intelligence.  My email response to Claire follows.  

Dear Claire, I must confess that at times I feel that academia gets too wrapped up in talk and little in action and frowns down upon those of us who do not share their level of intellect, hence my distinction between intelligence and intellect.  

As someone who comes from a  pretty pragmatic stand point I find all talk no action incredibly frustrating and then as I said as we walked towards the station, too often the intellects will do just that get trapped in talk without action.  I do not fit the intellect category, however I do consider myself very intelligent, trained in the University of Hard Knocks.  Therefore without the benefit of theory to test my ideas use mistakes as my testing / proving ground I tend to have a bigger go than most people I know.  I certainly do make mistakes and I also know that I won’t die wondering.

I figure, rightly or wrongly that more people being prepared to make mistakes and / or fail over the years have led to sustainable and positive actions as opposed to having successive and ongoing long winded deliberations that eventually may produce a result, but at what missed opportunity and or cost in the meantime.  I guess the advantage in the long deliberations is that there may be less mistakes and failures but then where would we be had Edison not been prepared to fail again and again?  Would love to speak some more, Regards Ross 

The conversation with Claire has got me seeing things more clearly from both sides now and can only hope that greater collaboration between, Academia and Industry, is the result.   

Just maybe that capacity to see the other person’s point of view is something that we should all focus on more.  I know that I intend to genuinely put into practice Stephen Covey’s  5th Habit, Seek First To Understand the BE understood.  I know I will.

I would love your feedback.

Regards Ross Mitchell;  ross@nesso.com.au

You are busy right? So busy doing everything you can to do of grow your business. So how on earth or more the point why on earth would you spend time on social media. It is just another thing to waste your time, right. WRONG. It is a most important business marketing strategy. But only when it is done right