More than 300 guests at Victorian Chamber Presents: Victoria – the home of innovation learned about challenging traditional industries, creating new markets and generating employment opportunities.

Minister for Industry and Innovation Ben Carroll delivered the keynote address and released a new LaunchVic research report, while an expert panel of LaunchVic CEO Dr Kate Cornick, Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre Executive Director Prof Colin McLeod and Transurban General Manager Strategic Innovation Tien-Ti Mak discussed real-life examples of local initiatives and how we can continue to foster innovation in Victoria.

Autonomous trucks

The event heralded Transurban’s new partnership with Plus, a global Silicon Valley-based autonomous driving software company, to advance its automated freight program.

Transurban trialled its first self-driving truck on the Monash Freeway last year, an Australian-first on public motorways, exploring how Plus’s driving technology combined with smart road infrastructure could work in Australia.

Mr Mak said Victoria could be an international leader and transform the freight industry.

“It’s going to push forward our ambitions around automated freight,” Mr Mak said. “It’s safer. It’s greener, it’s more efficient. We can move freight at night when there’s not much traffic, taking congestion off the roads and helping us sort out our freight problem as it grows into the future.”

‘Stories to tell’

Victoria has “an incredible story [but] we are terrible at telling it”, Prof McLeod said, pointing to our world-leading medtech sector with Monash University building an MRNA facility with Moderna, the ongoing strength of CSL and the Doherty Institute being the first institute to clone the coronavirus.

“A leading biomedical scientist in the world thinks Melbourne is the number two place in the world for biomedical science. It’s not a bad discussion to be part of.

“There are global companies that could go anywhere in the world, but they come to Melbourne.”

He provided other examples of clever startups such as former AFL player Nick Stone taking quality Melbourne coffee to New York, and enterprises Ida Sports and Zena Sports solving challenges in women’s and protective sportswear.

Minister Carroll had his own personal connection to startups – the at-home pregnancy monitoring provider Kali Healthcare, co-founded by University of Melbourne Associate Professor Fiona Brownfoot.

“Recently a lady came up to me and said, ‘Ben, I don’t know if you remember me, but I delivered your daughter.’

“Our daughter had a few issues before she was born, and we needed to go to the hospital every day for a month leading up to the birth.

“Dr Brownfoot is an obstetrician that created a remote foetal monitoring service on the side that will change lives and allow families to not go to the hospital once or twice a day.

“It’s quite incredible. That is what we have here in Melbourne.”

That enterprise was one beneficiary of Launch Victoria, which has helped startup employment grow 20 per cent year-on-year and is raising the proportion of women founders through the Alice Anderson fund.

Dr Cornick said since LaunchVic started six years ago, startups have tripled in Victoria to more than 3,000 enterprises and now employ 52,000 people, which is more than our gas, water and electricity companies combined.

“One of the great pleasures of my job is that every day you get to see all sorts of ideas, from the seriously impressive to seriously harebrained – and it’s typically the harebrained ones that succeed,” she said.

Changing how we think

Fostering innovation may require more work at an educational level to reshape how we think critically. Prof McLeod said educators tend to focus on the ‘vocational skills’ aspect, or whether someone can do the job, rather than ‘thinking’ entrepreneurially.

“You talk to people who run the big technology venture programs and they say the first thing we need to do is to teach about thinking a new way.”

The panel and Minister Carroll were unanimous that ‘failure’ needs to be seen not as a shortcoming but an opportunity to learn and improve.

Ms Cornick revealed a study showing that, across 150,000 startups, a founder had tried 3.7 times on average to start a company.

“So, between three and four times you start, you fail, you’ve learned, you go back, you start, you go back – that learning cycle is really important,” she said.

Another key takeaway was that innovation is not just the domain of disruptive startups. Big business should – and must – innovate to survive and thrive, and this can be done through partnerships with startups.

“One of the biggest complaints that our startups have is the inability to partner with local companies,” Ms Cornick said.

“We see a lot of our startups going offshore to work with U.S. companies because they find them easier to deal with.

“We certainly say if you have an innovation idea, we recommend that you get involved in the startup sector and see if you can help support a local business that might support your business. Ultimately partnering is a really big part of the growth trajectory.”

Final advice

Mr Mak: Don’t do it alone. There are lots of people and websites that can help you.

Prof McLeod: Find a problem worth solving – 45 per cent of failures report making a product no one wanted to buy.

Dr Cornick: Give it a crack, because if you don’t try you never know what you’re capable of.