Lawrence, I think you make some good points...
On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:42 PM, drllau <drlawrence...@gmail.com> wrote: > Beauty Contests are not a problem so long as there's a common > definition of beauty. This has always been the problem with bureacrats > "picking" winners as most people are conditioned with existing > technology envelope or what we in the tech transfer business call the > prevalent business logic. Could anyone imagine giving away long- > distance callining minutes (skype) or all-you-can-eat internet > (transition from hourly BBS to ISPs)? > That is the basis of the problem in Australia. Governments want to micro-manage technology and who can make what where and how. The "tech" industry should be ignoring the Government, except for paying the compulsory taxes and obeying statutary requirements. The "Market" and "Customers" should drive what products we will make. The classic example I can refer to is CSIRO trying to decide on > strategic R&D into cloud seeding or that new-fangled mainframe > business last century. Well ... now you know why Australia has a > growing ICT deficit. If you look at the US ICT engineering sector it > was built on the microprocessof (Moore's Law) and .... It's not as simple as that.. Firstly, the US military have a fascination with computers. The Australian military do not. Technology in the Australian military is only developed at the last minute - at best. Even if CSIRO made a judgment mistake a long time ago one could say they are still failing to pick up on market movement with Samba and WiFi. Samba is the Linux filesharing. It's sold by the likes of IBM and HP and they make *a lot* of money from it. Even the Taiwanese make more money from Samba with network- attached-storage than we do. Explain that... rules). I do have an isssue with innovation policies at political > level. What policy ? I joke... Seriously, tech innovation in Australia is treated as a problem and something that needs to be "cured". Australians are best served meeting up in Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Bali etc... and working out how to get on with business far away from the local constabulary. Expat Aussies are a happy bunch.. > ... to regularly hit boundaries or those out of stadium winners is a much > harder task. Indeed... > What happened in the > past is that once the local market get saturated, firms going overseas > have lost money (anyone remember the beer debacles in China in 90s?) > or get bought out (imagine if googleMaps was indepedent and merged > with say Lonely Planet and other Australian OBMs) or more recently > took the IP overseas and started companies in China like SunTech. > Part of the problem behind that is a lack of social network.. SB and forums like this can play a part in changing attitudes. The problem is that Australian Business was set up with a colonial plan. We can get things up, but the directions past that stage are less clear. German and French companies are good ones to study as to how they keep and hold markets for decades if not hundreds of years. Unlike Germany who can tap into East Europe labor pool or US with > large domestic market, the economic landscape in Australia is > different and I suspect an alternative approach has to evolve. There are many good lessons to learn from the Germans. I couldn't wish a better fate than young people getting given a return ticket to Germany to hang out, drink beer, sing songs and listen to stories there about how things are done. Once they've learnt how the Germans do things.. they can be allowed back - lol. The main difference between here and there is that our colonial legacy is a hinderance. To retain power, Governments crack the colonial whip and try to keep people in the "working" class. In Germany its so different. I'm simplifying, but the Government people over there are happy to let other people be bosses of making things. It doesn't challenge their ego's. For some reason, the colonial reason I suspect, Government people here are really purturbed here by the idea of Australians being in charge of other workers. It's as if it is some sort of challenge to Government Authority and colonial structure. What if anything needs to change is that Australians need to recognise they can be Leaders. And that they are good at it. That's the true secret behind our mega-entreprenuers.. they got to a point where all the good parts of Australian culture converged. They realised they could take charge and went for it and it worked. If we can connect the dots between Leadership and Workers like the Germans (or Americans) have done.. the future will be bright. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. 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