Research and Consulting
Sydney
2023-09-08 18:36:43
WICCO

1. Introduction

Sydney is located on the east coast of Australia, covering an area of approximately 12,368 square kilometres and with a population of 5.73 million.It is Australia's centre for business, trade, finance, tourism and education, and is the capital of New South Wales, known as the 'New York of the Southern Hemisphere'.Sydney's key industries are finance, technology, cultural and creative industries and tourism, and its economy accounts for approximately 7% of the Australian economy and a quarter of the New South Wales economy.Sydney is ranked 15th in the Innovation Cities™ Index 2019 by 2thinknow, a local Australian innovation data analysis company.

 

2. Development Of Innovation

(1) Innovative development strategy of Australia and Sydney

Sydney has the largest tech start-up ecosystem in Australia. Nearly 1,000 of Australia's 1,500 start-ups are located in Sydney. There are currently over 10 collaborative spaces across the city supporting tech entrepreneurs. According to PwC research, if these start-ups are supported and grow well, they are expected to contribute more than $109 billion to the Australian economy and create 540,000 jobs by 2033. Sydney is the capital of New South Wales and the state government has invested significant resources in the development of innovation in Sydney. As an innovation leader, the government is focused on driving R&D development and translation of results, on developing the skills of the future and on serving business well. It proposes a regional innovative plan for a combination of universities, business, technology in Sydney and asks universities, leading companies Atlassian and industry agency TechSydney, Fishburners and the Sydney Chamber of Commerce to participate in the development of the Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct. The area is surrounded by two universities, the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney. The Government has appointed the University of Sydney to lead the design and development of the Innovation and Technology Precinct. This innovative plan will facilitate the integration of industry, academia and research, and allow university graduates to access direct corporate internship opportunities and participate in community building.


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Photo by Leif Bergerson on Pexels

 

A. Austrade’s Landing Pads Program: Austrade’s Landing Pads Program is proposed by the Australian Government in response to the small local market and the difficulty of commercialising major inventions in the home market, and designed to support Australian technology companies to expand globally, to localise and scale their innovations in foreign markets as quickly as possible. The Australian government will select a group of competitive startups every year to try and error in the city in a fast and economical manner. During the 90-day landing period, all fees including rent and incubation service fee are paid by the Australian government. The first cities chosen for landing are San Francisco, Berlin, Shanghai, Tel Aviv and Singapore.

B. Australian National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA): In order to become a world-leading innovation nation, in late 2015 the Department of Industry, Science and Resources of Australian Government announced the agenda, with a total investment of $1.1 billion. The agenda aims to integrate Australia's tax system and business regulations with a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation to better translate publicly-funded research into commercial output.

C. Sustainable Sydney 2030 program: The Sydney Government released its Strategic Urban Plan for Innovation and Transformation in 2010——Sustainable Sydney 2030 program. The plan includes three sections: Green, Global and Connected. The main measures are: Sustainable regeneration development, such as renovating old urban areas and promoting a grid of green space systems, etc. and changing the use of historic buildings with care to maintain their historic appearance. Fostering global innovation and competitiveness, maintaining high economic growth and low costs, nurturing high-tech industries and creative parks in the central area, and creating new economic and employment growth points.


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Photo by Andres Carrera on Pexels

 

(2) Key support initiatives

Some of the NSW Government's key initiatives to support innovation include: The first is the NSW Innovation Concierge, which helps connect innovators and entrepreneurs to the most needed and appropriate government matchmaking departments. The second is the NSW Data Analytics Centre, which is responsible for analysing and understanding the issues facing the government, developing and publishing a digital government strategy and accelerating the NSW government's digital transformation. The third is the Sydney Startup Hub, which was stablished in February 2018. It’s Australia's first startup hub, offering over 17,000 square metres of office space, the hub brings together a variety of startups, incubators, accelerators and has over 2,500 members. The forth is to develop Generation STEM ( i.e. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), a 10-year teaching programme to attract more high-potential high school students to enter STEM-based industries in the future.

 

(3) Innovative Development Subjects

A. Institutions of Higher Learning: There are five renowned universities in Sydney, the University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, University of New South Wales, Macquarie University and the University of Western Sydney, with a good foundation of science and innovation ecology and industry-academia-research integration. The University of Sydney is one of the world's leading research universities, with education, law, medicine, accounting and finance, politics and international studies, architecture, music, pharmacy and pharmacology, and nursing all ranked in the 2019 QS World Top 20. The University of Technology Sydney has the top-ranked computer science and engineering program in Australia. The University of Technology Sydney has the top-ranked computer science and engineering program in Australia.

B. Important Company: Software giant Atlassian is Sydney's foremost homegrown technology company and one of the key drivers of technology innovation in Sydney. Founded in 2002, the company has offices in seven countries and employs over 4,000 people globally. In 2015, Atlassian was listed on NASDAQ in the US with a recent market capitalisation of approximately $38 billion (2020).The company's main business is to design and release corporate software for software development engineers and project managers.Its project tracking software JIRA and team collaboration software Confluence are world-renowned products. The Atlassian Mall offers over 4,000 applications and currently has over 150,000 customers worldwide, with at least 60% of Fortune 500 companies using Atlassian's software. Atlassian has no sales staff, only obtains customers through word of mouth, with cost of sales as a percentage of revenue remaining consistently at around 18%. It is out of a light sales strategy that Atlassian has been profitable for many years in a row, with revenues of US$1.2 billion in 2019.

C. Industry institutions: TechSydney is a non-profit, member system, and is committed to making Sydney into the world's top ten entrepreneurial ecosystems. Members include major corporations Airbnb, Amazon, Atlassian and Uber as well as well-known startups such as Dropbox (web file sync tool), Pandora (music streaming), SAP (business management software and solutions), DesignCrowd (design community), GoCatch (ride-hailing software), The Iconic (fashion shopping website), Local Measure (customer analytics platform), Pollenizer (incubator platform), StartupAUS (incubator platform) and Stone & Chalk (fintech creative hub), The Iconic (fashion shopping site), Local Measure (customer analytics platform), Pollenizer (incubator platform), StartupAUS (incubator platform) and Stone & Chalk (fintech creative hub).Founded in 2011, Fishburners is the largest non-profit joint office space in the Southern Hemisphere, with locations in Sydney and Brisbane. It aims to bring together the best entrepreneurs and start-ups in Australia to create a joint entrepreneurial community and enjoy a high reputation in the international venture capital circle.

D. Chamber of Commerce organisation: Founded in 1825, the Sydney Business Chamber's (SBC) mission is to represent Sydney's leading businesses and advocate for public policy to make Sydney a competitive, collaborative and liveable global city. The primary task of the SBC is to identify, develop and promote important matters in urgent development of various industries, promote the growth of economic activities, and reduce the obstacles of member companies in development. The SBC is committed to promoting free trade between enterprises, supporting and promoting the continuous success and development of its members in regional trade and global trade. The SBC protects and promotes the interests of member companies, promotes Sydney's economic development and close cooperation and exchanges between Australian companies and countries, and strengthen interaction between enterprises and government.


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Photo by Marek Piwnickion Pexels

 

(4) Important innovation cooperation platform

A. Future Asia Business Summit: More than 45%of Sydney's labor comes from overseas, about half of them from Asia. The Future Asian Business Summit is an annual event of Sydney City. It aims to strengthen the business connection between Sydney and Asia and build an international platform for local companies. The summit brings together local and international businesses, government representatives and ambassadors to Australia to exchange ideas on topics such as capitalising on emerging global markets, industry trends and key opportunities to build smart cities and better promote trade and investment between Sydney and Asia.

B. Sydney Landing Pad: Sydney Landing Pad is a Sydney City Council funded plan in partnership with Haymarket HQ crowdfunding space to provide essential support to businesses who are interested in relocating their business to Sydney, or using Australia as a test market or product development centre.The main measures include providing a 90-day free public work space for applicants, organizing training and seminars to provide high -quality service providers, visa support and finding local investors.