Published on the 30/07/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Digital technologies can be anything but benign for business according to the head of the Business Council of Australia – and Australia needs to be ready to make changes in order to prosper…
In a wake-up call to government and business, Catherine Livingstone, president of the Business Council of Australia and chair of Telstra, has warned that the forces changing the world – digital technology, demographic change and globalisation – are not benign.
In a major speech in Sydney this week Livingstone noted: “The speed of innovation in digital technology – particularly as a result of mobile broadband – means that apparently stable business models can be undermined and literally collapse.”
Livingstone referenced research conducted by McKinsey & Co which explores the extent to which Australian businesses are yet internationally competitive.
That identified agriculture as the sole Australian business sector which could outperform its US peer. It also compared Australia’s performance to that of New Zealand where concerted efforts in key areas, such as the milk industry were examples of “intent and ambition” that was delivering major benefits, and contrasted sharply with Australia which was a “story of squandered potential”.
The McKinsey report also identified the information technologies that it could prove economically disruptive for a range of industries by 2025. These included mobile internet, cloud technology, the internet of things, automation of knowledge work, advanced robotics, autonomous vehicles and 3D printing.
Livingstone warned that to prosper in the future local business and government had to “change its mindset to acknowledge that the unstoppable forces of globalisation and technology have shaken up forever what it means to be competitive at a world standard”.
She warned that to survive Australian businesses needed to be globally competitive in order to retain domestic customers and attract skilled employees. That can however prove politically unpalatable as Livingstone would be well aware of from her day job at Telstra which last week announced it would offshore 671 jobs as it sought to compete more effectively internationally.
Livingstone, a former head of the CSIRO, called for greater vision from government and industry alike.
She said that Australia needed a more robust innovation infrastructure, and took a swipe at the Government’s decision to pull the plug on NICTA funding from 2016, comparing that with China, which continued to invest heavily in national innovation programmes.
