Governments’ economic policies need to be based on a coherent view of the role of innovation and productivity in sustaining growth. This article analyses advice on fostering innovation from Australia’s main statutory economics adviser, the Productivity Commission. It argues that the Productivity Commission’s comprehensive 2007 report, Public Support for Science and Innovation, contributed to a policy vacuum hampering government support for innovation for nearly a decade. First, within the Productivity Commission’s understanding of innovation was a contradiction between its required policy targeting criteria and the impossibility of meeting these criteria. Second, the resulting stance on innovation policy was at odds with research and theory on the drivers of innovation and hence growth – particularly innovation systems theories and those based on evolutionary economics. The ensuing innovation policy vacuum suggests that the Productivity Commission placed the abstract ideological ‘purity’ of neoclassical economic theory above empirical exploration of how government can best support Australia’s future economic development. Since late 2015, moves to fill this policy vacuum have included a Senate inquiry, a government department restructure, and the creation of a new Innovation and Science statutory advisory board. Whether these initiatives foster sustained innovation will depend on the extent to which they adopt approaches based on innovation systems or evolutionary economics, and transcend the static neoclassical mindset espoused by the Productivity Commission.

No abstract

No abstract

The Australian wine show system aims to 'better the breed', raising Australian wine standards. It does this by supporting learning within the show system and influencing other systems in the sector more broadly. This study reports on the results of 63 interviews with a range of actors in the industry. The findings show wine shows influence learning about wine quality and saleability on multiple levels, and that their perceived legitimacy is a vital driver of the show system's effectiveness. Shows connect actors, provide a mechanism for learning and knowledge sharing and support wine marketing. This paper's main contribution is to show how wine shows act to influence a range of sectoral dynamics, both closely connected with wine shows and more distant factors such as labour markets and the research and education systems. The research shown in this paper shows up six roles for the Australian wine show system. The first four roles are, to some extant at least, well studied in the existing literature. The six roles are: 1) expert and independent judgement, 2) marketing and promotion, 3) winemaker learning, 4) social learning, 5) validation of winemakers and inputs, and 6) validation of innovations.

Is what is known from research on systemic innovation reflected in innovation policy, both as guiding principles and as actions? This paper highlights a major paradox in the translation of research on innovation into innovation policy in Australia. The innovation studies literature has established the central role of the vocational education and training (VET) system and VET-trained workers in technology generation, diffusion and incremental innovation. Research has also established that the pattern of innovation in Australia, compared with that in many other OECD countries, makes firms more reliant on VET skills to implement innovation. Despite this recognition in the innovation literature, this paper argues that the VET system is largely excluded from government innovation policy and programmes in Australia. Evidence for this exclusion is derived from a textual analysis of the principal Australian government policy statements and government-sponsored studies of the Australian innovation system, and from an analysis of the interest groups represented on government innovation advisory and policy structures. Tentative explanations are advanced for this exclusion and a number of important benefits are identified for the VET system and the wider innovation system arising from closer integration of VET into innovation policy