Australia does not lack research talent, promising ideas or public investment. Its persistent challenge is turning these assets into products, services and productivity gains at the scale the nation needs.
The federal government’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development has put this translation gap at the centre of the national innovation debate. It describes a fragmented system and calls for stronger coordination, including a National Innovation Council.
But with the diagnosis now well established, the more urgent question is how Australia moves into delivery.
To turn world-class research into productivity, Australia needs to scale the collaboration models already producing real-world outcomes.
One place to look is the National Industry Innovation Network (NIIN), an industry-led collaboration initiated by Cisco six years ago. It now brings Cisco together with 10 Australian universities to work on applied challenges spanning health, cybersecurity, defence, transport, education, energy and critical infrastructure.
The network has supported more than 350 projects, engaged over 3,000 students and helped mobilise significant funding. Its importance, however, lies less in its size than in the operating model behind it – problems are defined with industry and service providers, researchers and students work in shorter applied innovation cycles, and projects are governed through a common methodology intended to make successful approaches repeatable across the network.
Reg Johnson, Cisco’s director of education and strategic industries, Australia and New Zealand, says Australia’s research capability is world class, but its performance in university-industry collaboration and technology adoption has lagged.
“Industry needs to take a stronger lead,” Mr Johnson says. “We need to really lean in from the point of view of what is needed to make a difference.”
For Professor Alec Cameron, vice-chancellor and president of RMIT University, moving from diagnosis to delivery means starting with the problem – and reconsidering how success is defined.
Universities have traditionally demonstrated research excellence through funding, publication and citation metrics. These measures matter, he says, but the ambition for research should go further, encompassing implementation, adoption and use.
“If we are really focused on achieving great innovation in terms of the application of ideas, we need to have the problems and the partners in the room at the start,” Professor Cameron says.
This means bringing researchers together from the outset with the clinicians, businesses, government agencies and communities that will deploy a solution. It also means involving technology partners that can provide the digital foundations needed to test and implement ideas.
Professor Cameron compares digital infrastructure with the railways, highways and canals of earlier industrial eras – that is, its value is not the infrastructure itself, but the economic and social activity it makes possible.
The NIIN’s health projects show how this can work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students and researchers at La Trobe University worked with Northern Health to prototype a virtual triage service. The Victorian Virtual Emergency Department has since reported that 86 per cent of patients using the service avoided a trip to hospital, reducing pressure on physical emergency departments.
At RMIT, work responding to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has explored how technology can support better care, including fall detection and other tools that help older Australians remain safely at home for longer.
The NIIN model is also helping industry partners tackle real-world commercial challenges. In 2025, Coles sponsored the inaugural MasterTech program, led by La Trobe University, challenging students from Innovation Central hubs across Australia and Singapore to develop prototype solutions for the “sustainable store of the future”.
Mentored by Cisco engineers and pitching their ideas at Cisco Live Melbourne, students worked directly on a live industry challenge, with the winning team awarded $10,000 to further develop its solution alongside Cisco and Coles. The program demonstrated how the NIIN can connect industry with emerging talent and research expertise to accelerate innovation and develop practical solutions to real business problems.
To extend this approach beyond isolated projects, Mr Johnson describes the NIIN’s network of Innovation Central hubs as an emerging “operating system for innovation” – a shared operating plan, governance framework and set of core standards that allow universities to retain their local strengths while working as a national network.
The model is designed to create a multiplier effect, he says, replacing isolated projects with a connected platform that can move more quickly, share lessons and tackle common priorities at greater scale.
It also puts students inside live industry challenges. Along with technical capability in AI, cybersecurity and quantum technologies, Mr Johnson says Australia will need people with the critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills to translate between industry, academia and government.
Professor Cameron argues that the same logic must extend to the existing workforce. New knowledge cannot enter the economy only through the next generation of graduates. As AI becomes embedded across workplaces, universities will increasingly need to bring education into industry and enable workers to return for shorter, targeted periods of learning throughout their careers.
“Implementation of technology is usually not about the technology – it’s about the workforce’s capability, confidence and experience to use the tools available,” he says.
Measuring adoption and impact is therefore critical. The lesson for policymakers is not that one network can answer every recommendation of the SERD, but that Australia can move faster by strengthening and scaling proven coordinating mechanisms already operating in the system.
This will require incentives that look beyond the front end of the innovation pathway. Professor Cameron says research is only one part of the journey; programs should be conceived around the health, education, industry and productivity outcomes Australia is trying to achieve, then measured by whether ideas are taken up and used.
In practical terms, success over the next three to five years would be visible in solutions that have moved from trial to standard practice – technologies deployed in hospitals, measurable service improvements, students moving into emerging jobs, existing workers using AI effectively, and Australian capability contributing to new industries and regional partnerships.
For the NIIN, the next phase includes deeper connections with the Asia Pacific region through Australian universities’ established regional relationships, delivery of shared AI infrastructure and, critically, broader industry participation.
“This is an action-focused vehicle,” Mr Johnson says. “Talking is important, but it’s in the doing.”
This distinction is now central to Australia’s innovation debate. The country knows where its system falls short. The next test is whether government, industry and universities can organise around outcomes, back what is already working and turn research strength into impact at a national scale.
This article was produced by InnovationAus.com in partnership with Cisco.
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