By James Thomson
We assembled a group of 17 entrepreneurs and experts to SmartCompany’s Developing an Entrepreneurial Australia Roundtable to identify the next 10 multi-billion dollar industries – and create an action plan for developing an entrepreneurial Australia.
Australia wants a new direction. And since the Rudd Government took office six months ago, there have been a plethora of inquiries and summits announced as the nation seeks to forge a new future.
High profile entrepreneurs and experts came to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ office in Melbourne to discuss some very important questions: How do we develop an entrepreneurial Australia? How do we create the nation’s future wealth and jobs? How do we make sure that Australia takes a global, futuristic, proactive approach, not a more nationalist, narrow and reactive one?
The aim of the SmartCompany Roundtable was to identify 10 multi-billion industries of the future and develop an action plan to ensure that SMEs are linked into these global industries and opportunities.
The results from the Roundtable will join more than 700 submissions. The Federal Government’s National Innovation Council chair, Terry Cutler – who attended the Roudtable – will present the report to the Government by 31 July. The Government has promised a white paper response by September, with the actual programs coming out of the innovation review expected to form the centerpiece of next year’s federal budget.
Cutler wouldn’t nominate the industries the innovation review is likely to support, so we asked IBISWorld general manager Rob Bryant to help us identify Australia’s 10 multi-billion-dollar growth areas.
Bryant says the key to these growth areas is outsourcing by households, business, government and other nations.
Here are the 10 big sectors:
Click on the links (as they appear) as SmartCompany reviews these sectors and the specific opportunities they will offer to smart companies.