Opinion piece written by Francis Norman, President of Engineers Australia WA Division.
For the duration of the industrial age, innovation has been the source of progress and wealth of nations. Learning to harness the energy from fossil fuels to produce, among other things, steam and electricity opened the door to most of the inventions of the last century. These inventions were typically large, bold and had physical form.
In more recent times, the scale of our innovations has been getting progressively smaller. Indeed, since the development and mass adoption of the internet, many innovations have no physical form whatsoever, but are small pieces of software we all know as ‘Apps’. There are exceptions to this pattern however, such as the selfie stick…
We hear a lot of rhetoric coming from all political sides about the need to be a more innovative society. While we all need to embrace this push for innovation, the big questions are; “What is innovation?”, “How do we support it?”, and “What role do we all have in an innovative society?”.
Fundamentally, innovation is the quest to do things more efficiently, safer and with less waste. It includes development of new technologies, either to do something we had never tried before such as space and deep sea exploration, or to do something we already do, but in a different way, such as the evolution of digital communication technologies. It also includes activities such as developing new techniques and software, such as BIM, which has revolutionised the way we design, construct and maintain buildings.
For innovation to thrive we need vision and bold leadership: it requires political leaders who are prepared to look beyond the next electoral cycle and address generational challenges. It requires business leaders who are prepared to look past next month’s profit and loss statements and take on genuine transformational change, both within their business and through their business, for the betterment of society. Finally, and perhaps most of all, it requires a society prepared to accept risk, to recognise that not every new initiative will be successful and that many will fail, yet still support the innovators who try, regardless of the results.
Today, sadly, we don’t see sufficient evidence that many of these are in place. The revolving doors of political leadership, particularly at the national level, have left the country standing still for much of the last decade. Business leaders are increasingly so absorbed with their immediate bottom line that they are unwilling or unable to invest in future needs and, worst of all, our modern society has seemingly forgotten the excitement of large scale innovation from programs like the Apollo missions. Settling instead to queue for the next generation mobile phone and, often fed by the media, we have become quick to criticise others for attempting new and innovative experimentation, rather than celebrate them.
Maintaining our lifestyle into the future depends on our ability to innovate. If we don’t innovate, others will. Leaving us to serve only as the world’s quarry and fuel station. That is not a future I want for our profession or our nation.
@FrancisNorman