29 November 2006
Australia's trade deficit of $1.26 billion, shown in the October "International Trade in Goods and Services" report released today, is evidence of a need to invest in the commercialisation of the country's research, according to Monash University expert Professor Nick Birrell.
Professor Birrell said despite the resource boom, in which Australia is benefiting from inflated commodity prices, the country is still recording a deficit in its balance of payments.
"While developed world economic growth is increasingly driven by sophisticated high-tech, knowledge based industries and while Australia as a nation clearly boxes above its weight in innovation and research, it is underachieving in the commercialisation of the resultant knowledge", Professor Birrell said.
In a speech to be delivered in Melbourne tomorrow, Professor Birrell will argue that the nation risks a blow-out in its foreign debt as it re-imports the commercialised developments of its fundamental research in areas such as medicine and information technology.
While the nation has 13 universities in the top 100 in the world, and researchers in universities and industry are regularly leading the world in drug development, engineering innovation and technological evolution; the nation faces a critical lack of expertise in taking those ideas from the research bench to the market place.
Professor Birrell, a venture capitalist who has scaled back his international investment activities to focus on education and research into the business of transforming science to wealth, and former Melbourne University researcher Professor Mike Vitale have established the Asia-Pacific Centre for Science and Wealth Creation at Monash.
The Centre and Monash's Graduate School of Business will provide a unique one year Master's course in commercialisation of science and technology aimed at giving science and technology students a grounding in business and commercial development, through a combination of theory and hands-on experience. Students will be given a project to develop a commercialisation plan for an area of active Monash scientific or technical research as part of their course, in order to gain real-world exposure.
"We couldn't easily undertake such commercialisation projects in the US because so much of their commercialisable research is quickly grabbed for development. The US has in place the infrastructure to ensure that valuable research makes it to the market place to the benefit of the US economy." Professor Birrell said.
"In Australia we have an impressive array of research achievements but we have an immature infrastructure to take those efforts from the bench to the bank.
"We have developed this unique course because we want to see Australia's research achievements fully reflected in economic growth. Our students will have amazing opportunities and when the first one makes a million from their course project, the importance of this work to the sustainability of the economy and to the nation should be clear to all."
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