Achieving a sustainable tech-driven economy in Australia

Michael Bromley, CEO, Stone & Chalk Group

Published in The Australian Business Review, Thursday Mar 24, 2022

We find ourselves in an unprecedented health and climate crisis. We are at a critical point in history, and have a unique opportunity to hit the reset button, and put Australia on a more sustainable path. But to achieve this, we need to transform the sectors that form the backbone of our economy – our healthcare system, our industries, our infrastructure, energy and transport systems. In short, we need to transform our everyday life.

When we talk about building a ‘sustainable’ tech-driven economy, sustainable has, in this case, two meanings. It reflects both our economy and our ecology. It is about making sure that the economy is driven not just now, but also into the future. Australia’s economy is driven primarily on digging things out of the ground, mining and selling them, and that’s both not sustainable for our economy (because we eventually run out), and ecology (because we’re overloading carbon into the atmosphere).

The good news is, we have a unique window of opportunity to transform our economy, but there is work to be done to get there.

Evolving the business model

Companies now overwhelmingly embrace sustainability as integral to their mission. While encouraging, there is a larger blindspot we need to address when it comes to sustainability – the pathway for sustainable technology innovation in Australia doesn’t exist.

Right now, most emerging technology companies don’t have a clear path to success. A company or a person will think of a new idea, and for the most part, try to figure out how to develop a product or a service. They may or may not do product market fit before they dive into creating it. They may or may not look at IP, they may or may not look at security. But essentially, they’re on their own. They’re flailing around, trying to figure out what they need; what they should have, what they should do and who to trust to help them. The truth is a lot of good and potentially successful ideas have never materialised because there hasn’t been a support system surrounding them. This is exactly what we provide at Stone & Chalk but even that isn’t enough.

We need to fundamentally change how the current and future innovators of Australia are supported because right now, they’re left isolated in their garages. If you want to be a tradie or a lawyer or a doctor or go to business school, there’s a clear track you know you need to follow to get there. However, if you want to be an entrepreneur, the pathway doesn’t exist, you’re just on your own. We need to make it a curated pathway — starting as early as teaching entrepreneurship in schools. Kids of today should be able to grow up believing being an entrepreneur is a viable career path and this is where we are headed at Stone & Chalk.

Growing emerging technologies

Australia’s economy is currently driven by mining and resource-based industries (with mining being the country’s largest industry with a 10.4 per cent share of the economy). However, if we’re going to rely on digging rocks out of the ground, or natural gas, or other types of natural resources, we will eventually run out and we will do damage to our planet while we do that. We need to change course.

By 2030, technology sector activity has the potential to contribute more to GDP in Australia than primary industries or manufacturing. Over the coming decades, emerging technologies such as space tech, cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, blockchain and more will reshape global economies, improve people’s lives and solve some of the greatest challenges facing our world today.

In Australia, we don’t have a large enough emerging technology ecosystem. However, we have an enormous opportunity for emerging technology. It is not a commodity we can run out of – there will always be emerging technologies. Nobody’s going to run out of ideas. No one’s ever run out of ideas.

As a nation, we need to find ways to foster these emerging and unlimited resources like ideas and technology, and focus our economy on that. That is the only way that we can both do better for our planet, and our country at the same time. It’s an economic and ecological sustainability win — and our mission at Stone & Chalk.

The power of shared experiences

I use the word “curated” purposefully, because building our future economy is a process of bringing together not just people but also ecosystems — across startups, industry, government, and corporations. It takes a village to raise a child. Well, it takes a village to create a startup as well. At Stone & Chalk, we like to talk about folks who are part of our communities as our ‘village’ and we care for our community the way a village would care for a child. When speaking to our village, I often hear from them that the sharing of ideas and experiences is the most valuable part of our community. It’s the secret sauce. Although it’s a simple concept, shared experiences have a deep impact on not only human socialisation, but also the socialisation of new ways of doing things. Sharing that sense of community is critical to success for an emerging technology company.

This concept of shared experience also applies to how you do business. I don’t care whether you’re an emerging technology company, or whether you sell combs or cars. The product you sell isn’t a thing. It’s the experience of dealing with you as an organisation. It doesn't matter how good your product or services are. If it’s too hard to deal with your organisation, you’ve already lost. It’s the combination of the right technology, the right people, and most of all the right experience that will continue to breed sustainable businesses. We’re driving that into our village so that it becomes the focal point.

To conclude, this ecosystem of emerging technology needs to be a national focus. To do that, we need to make the ecosystem of startups and scaleups in Australia both bigger and more supported. It needs to be consistently supported with an emphasis on scaling. Failure to develop this ecosystem could lead to missed opportunities for our economy and tragic consequences for our ecology.