Devil’s Advocate: Is the political innovation obsession a giant waste of money?

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah Renai. You have a point about start ups. I watched a video on Pluralsight last year on Startups. The author who had spent decades in Silicon Valley said that startups have at best a 90% chance of failing. Moreover venture capitalists, he said, know this and expect 9/10 of the time to see a startup failure.

  2. After thinking about it, I have decided that the innovative culture, knowledge and experience gained from failures is most likely worth it as those 20 something’s move on to more stable areas of industries and take the lessons learned with them.

  3. I’m a technology “start up” business. I’m profitable and growing very well.

    I think you are missing the point though. The government has NOTHING for businesses like mine. We would like some subsidies like being able to inhabit unused government offices, free tickets to start up conferences, assistance to employ others – similar to learning a trade.

    I’m going to change the world, however, I don’t need angel funding, VC funding etc. I hope to never take it.

    However, the government aren’t aiming at businesses like mine. They’re wanting overseas investors to dump millions into start ups who are going to be the next Google. That’s “apparently” good for the economy – not sure what happens when the VC’s want to take their returns offshore. But I think that’s what they’re aiming at.

  4. The critical issue for every country is how to continually create new jobs to replace the industries and jobs that are being disrupted by ongoing changes in technology, consumer demand, patterns of trade, etc. Australia’s high standard of living is inevitably dependent on our ability to both improve productivity as well as to innovate in ways that drives new job creation. Investments in research and education are important as drivers of such improvement, supported by relevant regulatory and tax changes.

    For a detailed look at how startups create employment, have a look at the Sept. 2015 report, “The employment dynamics of Australian entrepreneurship” by Luke Hendrickson, Stan Bucifal, Antonio Balaguer and David Hansell, http://www.industry.gov.au/Office-of-the-Chief-Economist/Research-Papers/Pages/The-employment-dynamics-of-Australian-entrepreneurship.aspx

    This report focus on “startups” in the broader sense of any firm that is less than two years old.

    Key points from the report include:

    “ As firms age they contribute less to job creation and more to job destruction. Young firms in Australia contribute disproportionately to net job creation. Although employing a small fraction of the Australian workforce (15 per cent), young SMEs generated the largest share of total job creation (40 per cent) in the economy. ”

    “ For every 100 existing jobs in Australia in any given year, start-ups will, on average, add 5 jobs within the following three years. ”

    “ Over the period 2006–2011 we estimate that 1.04 million full time equivalent (FTE) jobs were added to the economy. Start-ups (firms aged 0–2 years) added 1.44 million FTE jobs to the economy whereas older firms (3+ years) shed around 400,000 FTE jobs over the same period. ”

    “ Australia has relatively high start-up activity but this activity has been declining. The employment generated per start-up is low compared with other OECD countries.”

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