The chair of the National Reconstruction Fund has promised to take a “proactive and forward leaning” approach to business development opportunities, in response to ministerial pressure to deploy $1.5 billion this financial year.
The language is decisive. The intent is clear. Yet something fundamental is missing from this discussion.
The NRF’s challenge isn’t being more aggressive. It’s expecting investment professionals to execute commercial translation, then getting frustrated with the outcome.
Who’s in the room
Eight of ten National Reconstruction Fund board members come from finance, investment banking, venture capital or treasury governance. Chair Martijn Wilder: climate finance law and clean energy governance. Chief investment officer Mary Manning: 25 years in finance and investment. One commercial board member resigned in 2024, replaced in March 2025. The remaining member represents the unions perspective.
January’s chief executive appointment followed the same path. David Gall brings 35 years in banking, including 16 years at National Australia Bank as group executive for Corporate & Institutional Banking and chief risk officer.
These aren’t poor appointments. These are highly capable professionals perfect for managing investment vehicles. But the competency of the organisation determines outcomes, and who is in the room shapes what actually gets done.
When VCs try to build companies
Investment professionals excel at capital allocation, deal structuring, portfolio risk management. Essential skills for managing a $15 billion fund’s financial integrity.
Building commercial capability requires entirely different experience: customer discovery under competitive pressure, product-market fit validation, international scaling, sustained revenue generation over market cycles.
Expecting investment professionals to execute company-building is like expecting a VC to run a manufacturing plant. Both need commercial sophistication, but they’re fundamentally different jobs requiring incompatible skillsets.
There is no doubt the board has the requisite skills to evaluate whether technologies look promising and financial structures seem sound. What is missing is the experience to identify which Australian companies possess the commercial maturity to translate innovations into market value.
The language tells the story
“Crowd in funding” dominates NRF discussions. That’s VC language for de-risking portfolio investments through co-investment syndication. The board thinks like VCs building portfolios: assessing deals, structuring co-investment, managing portfolio risk.
Treasury thinking applies similar logic: leverage public money to attract private capital.
Commercially mature Australian companies don’t need the NRF to “crowd in” investors. They need patient capital over extended timeframes to support sustained commercial reconstruction.
The fixation on supply chain mapping and value chain studies follows the same pattern. When investment professionals can’t evaluate commercial capabilities, they analyse financial structures (or commission tier 1 consulting firms for “evidentiary foundations”) because that is what they are used to doing.
This isn’t criticism of their domain expertise. They’re doing what they’re good at. It simply highlights one critical gap in the expertise necessary for NRF success.
What works elsewhere
Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes succeed because they were purpose-built for commercial translation from inception. Their governance includes commercial professionals with decades of industry experience, people who’ve built commercial relationships with customers and competed in markets.
Fraunhofer’s 70 per cent industry revenue demands commercial leaders who understand customer needs and revenue generation.
The UK tried the opposite, with the £2.5 billion Catapult program using academic governance for commercial translation. Despite substantial funding and clear mandates, Catapults only achieved 40 per cent industry revenue versus the target of Fraunhofer 70 per cent-plus.
The NRF faces a similar challenge. While Investment governance is well suited to manage financial deployment, it too can struggle with commercial translation and impact.
What commercial leadership brings
Adding commercial leaders wouldn’t just provide different perspectives. It would enable systematic identification of Australian companies with genuine translation capabilities.
Commercial leaders understand what reconstruction requires. They’ve scaled operations, integrated technologies into commercial products, generated revenue through market cycles, managed technical and commercial risk simultaneously over decades.
They recognise which companies possess established market presence, demonstrated revenue generation, technical integration expertise, international market access, sustained commercial track records. Investment professionals evaluate these factors on paper. Commercial leaders recognise them operationally because they’ve built them.
The reconstruction effort would shift focus from deal structures to company capabilities. From co-investment frameworks to sustained development support. From financial risk mitigation to market opportunity assessment. From portfolio deployment to systematic company building.
Fix the composition, execute the mission
Eighteen months of limited deployment despite ministerial pressure proves that a “forward leaning” narrative doesn’t overcome competency limitations.
The solution isn’t replacing individuals with similar profiles, we need to reset the balance of experience. This does not mean more investment professionals, but the addition of commercial leaders from Australian technology companies. Leaders who understand the commercial competencies that complement investment skills. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient alone.
The NRF doesn’t need more analysis, supply chain mapping, or evidentiary foundations. It needs commercial industry leaders who can identify Australian companies with the organisational capabilities to carry more local innovations across the valley of death.
Fix the composition, and execution will follow.
Adrian Beer is managing director of Australian Innovation Exchange and the former CEO of METS Ignited.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.