Australia’s future prosperity and sustainability is dependent on improving our ability to build disciplinary bridges. These bridges will enable the convergence of knowledge and skill sets to create innovative solutions to social, economic and environmental challenges. Collaborative innovation is at the forefront of creating an innovative culture for a better Australia.
Large companies are turning to the strategic collaboration of their employees, encouraging them to use innovative ideas to solve corporate issues. This strategy creates what is known as a COIN – A Collaborative Innovation Network. Peter Gloor, A research Scientist at MIT, has defined a COIN as, “a cyber-team of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the Web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work.” Slack, known as “team commination for the 21st century”, is an example of a COIN platform. The innovative platform allows teams within companies to easily communicate, share and combine information in order to complete and solve tasks. Large interstate and global companies are utilising COIN platforms to eliminate the barriers of long distance and differing time zones, hence, connecting people, with different backgrounds, knowledge and skill sets.
Additionally, companies are not only using collaboration as a strategy internally, but are moving towards the external collaboration with other companies. External collaboration can add value and create a competitive advantage to companies by creating strategic partnerships in differing industries. These mutually beneficial partnerships allow both businesses to leverage creativity, resources, and experience,
A report by Siemens (2011) outlines what Australia’s collaborative innovation future looks like. Although Australia currently ranks low in innovation, the report suggests that by 2030 Australia will be an “innovation powerhouse” by creating a world of synergy between companies, universities and global research and development counterparts. It is predicted that research organisations, businesses and government entities will pool together resources to ensure existing and start-up companies will have the opportunity to enhance innovative technologies. Open innovation methods, such as COIN networks, will be highly adapted to by both SME’s and MNE’s.
The strategic cooperation of industries and universities will provide students with ideal learning conditions to grow and develop a better Australia in future years. This is already occurring with the likes of Monash University and Siemens collaborating in a four-year partnership to advance the progress of medical research in the field of molecular medicine. The partnership aims to provide support to researchers and academics in this field to deliver clinical outcomes which could potentially improve or cure various disease processes.
Collaboration is no longer just a strategy, but a key tool for future innovations – and not just for business success, but the growth and the development of the world’s economic condition, environmental sustainability and social well-being.
