Australians love reminding ourselves we invented Wi-Fi, the black field and the Hills Hoist. However these tales are outdated.
The challenges we face in the present day are new. Nostalgia received’t construct the techniques we have to flip our subsequent breakthrough into one thing the world buys.
No marvel we rank 68 out of 69 international locations for entrepreneurship within the 2025 Worldwide Institute for Administration Improvement (IMD) world aggressive rankings. Our downside isn’t expertise or concepts. It’s the system that helps them.
Too typically, concepts head offshore to be commercialised as a result of we haven’t constructed the appropriate techniques, incentives or cultural settings to help them right here.
Mecca founder Jo Horgan
The EY Entrepreneur of the Yr program has celebrated daring Australian companies from numerous industries for greater than 20 years – from Chemist Warehouse which began with a single retailer 25 years in the past and now operates over 500 shops nationally, to skincare chief Mecca, which started in founder Jo Horgan’s Melbourne lounge.
These companies present us that nice concepts can come from wherever. However turning them into worldwide success tales with international influence takes greater than smarts and grit.
It additionally takes capital, functionality and the arrogance that Australia is the perfect place to develop.
Tall poppies, brief imaginative and prescient
Ambition nonetheless makes Australians a bit uneasy. Whereas different nations have a good time risk-takers, we have a tendency to chop them down. That mindset dulls our urge for food to strive, to fail—and finally, to construct one thing higher.
We frequently undervalue those that forge their very own path or see entrepreneurship as a power for progress.
Take David Bussau, an EY Entrepreneur of the Yr alumnus, who has helped over 7.5 million households entry microfinance in creating international locations via his work with Alternative Worldwide Australia.
Entrepreneurs don’t simply construct companies—they construct what’s lacking. From local weather options to group finance, they fill the gaps that governments and enormous companies typically can’t. That makes entrepreneurship not simply worthwhile, however important to our nationwide infrastructure.
Pegged again by coverage
Australia ranks eleventh globally for worldwide funding, in response to IMD – so capital isn’t the difficulty. Current offers in knowledge centres, property portfolios, and infrastructure present that traders proceed to see worth right here. What’s missing is the appropriate regulatory atmosphere to assist native concepts develop and scale.
That begins with tax reform and chopping purple tape.
In its submission to the latest Financial Reform Roundtable, EY Australia outlined three near-term reforms that would make a significant distinction:
- Repair the R&D tax system. Make all offsets refundable, take away outdated caps and modernise eligibility to mirror how innovation actually works – notably in productivity-boosting applied sciences.
- Help small enterprise cashflow. Present quarterly or semi-annual refundable credit for companies underneath $20 million in turnover to allow them to reinvest in development.
- Encourage onshore commercialisation. Introduce an mental property (IP) tax incentive, used successfully throughout Europe, to stop Australian-developed IP from flowing offshore.
ResMed, based by Dr Peter Farrell, is one among Australia’s most profitable medical know-how firms. ResMed’s transfer to the US reveals that even our brightest concepts will depart if we don’t construct the techniques to maintain them right here.
The reforms above are some sensible methods to cease Australian innovation from leaving our shores and begin incomes our place as a really intelligent nation.
However we’d like one other massive change …
Rewiring the nationwide mindset
Right here’s the actual kicker: the IMD index relies on notion, not efficiency. It displays how enterprise leaders view a rustic’s potential.
Alongside our poor rating in entrepreneurship, Australia positioned 62nd for company effectivity, sixtieth for workforce productiveness, and 54th for digital know-how adoption.
This paints an image of a enterprise tradition that undervalues initiative and innovation, resists threat, and settles for the established order. This isn’t a start-up downside – it’s a techniques downside.
The Australian Authorities’s response to the Financial Reform Roundtable should problem how we take into consideration and help entrepreneurship. As a result of Australia doesn’t want extra inventions- we have already got the concepts.
What we’d like is a system that doesn’t depart them hanging.
- Selina Brief is managing accomplice, purchasers & industries, at EY Oceania.
