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Innovation Ecosystems: Lessons for Australia Report by Dr Toby Christopher Heap, Churchill Fellow 2017 Churchill Fellowship to investigate and learn from startup accelerators and innovation ecosystems - Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, UK, India, China, Singapore. Awarded by The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust 1 INDEMNITY CLAUSE THE WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST Innovation Ecosystems: Lessons for Australia Report by Dr Toby Christopher Heap, Churchill Fellow 2017 Churchill Fellowship to investigate and learn from startup accelerators and innovation ecosystems - Israel, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, UK, India, China, Singapore. I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this Report, either in hard copy or on the internet or both, and consent to such publication. I indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer arising out of any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or arising out of the publication of any Report Submitted to the Trust and which the Trust places on a website for access over the internet. I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of any person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final Report is, actionable for defamation, a breach of any privacy law or obligation, breach of confidence, contempt of court, passing-off or contravention of any other private right or of any law. Signed Date 12 July 2019 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When I decided to apply for a Churchill Fellowship, I was naïve to the logistical challenge that awaited me and the degree to which I would be calling upon the good will and generous support of so many. There are dozens of people who have helped me in one way or another at some point on this Churchill journey. Unfortunately, I am not able to mention them all here, but there are a handful of people I would like to call-out for their particularly generous support. First, this Fellowship would not have been possible without the support of my business partner and brother Ben Heap along with the rest of the H2 Ventures team. He has always been such a huge support to me, for which I can’t thank him enough. I would also like to mention Lily Wu who did a lot of the heavy lifting in researching my trip and setting up an awesome array of meetings with amazing people. The number one piece of advice I give to aspiring Churchill Fellows is to get the best referees you can. I know from experience that, when assessing a group of unknown candidates for anything, the quality of their referees tells you a lot about the individual. With that in mind I am so grateful and humbled by the people who wrote references in support of my Fellowship. For their support I would like to thank: the Hon Arthur Sinodinos AO who, at the time, was the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science; the Hon Wyatt Roy, who, as the youngest person ever elected to the Australian federal parliament and the youngest Minister in the history of the Commonwealth, was previously the Assistant Minister for Innovation; and, Milton Samios, the Chief Executive Officer of Investec Australia Limited. I would also like to thank Ali McDonald, Geoff Mason and Jacqui Marshall who helped behind the scenes with arranging these references. Prior to and during my travels there were several people who provided particularly valuable contributions and/or went out of their way to make very helpful introductions that led to valuable meetings. On this front I would like to thank Wyatt Roy, Dave Sharma, Katherine Heathcote, Simone Whetton, James Mabbott, Nick Kaye, Brett Mason, Lewis Casey, Kate May, Jane Ryan, Miriam Waters, Susan Corbisiero, Daniel Zhan, Philip Yeo, Bruce Gosper, Carolyn Atkinson, Michael Smith Jr, Hugh Mason, Edwin Chow, Der Shing Lim, Tsvi Vinig, 3 Constantijn van Orange-Nassau, Lynette Wood, Jonathan Kenna, Marie Wall, Mikolaj Norek, Tor Bonnier, Matt Anderson, David Watson, Ben Brabyn, Catherine Howarth, Philippe Legrain, Kevin Baughan, Stian Westlake, Saul Estrin, Thomas Hellmann, Aaron, Ari Siegmann, Dan Galai, Chris Cannan, Omri Wislizki, Rachel Daydou, Peter Davidson, and Johan Uddman. Of course, I must thank the team at the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust for putting their faith in me in the first place and for all their financial and logistical support in making this possible. I would also like to thank all the sponsors of the Trust, past and present, and the broader Churchill Fellowships community of which I am excited to now be a member. Last but certainly not least, my family. Without the support of my best friend and wife Rebecca and my three wonderful children Heidi, Edison and Archer I never could have considered taking on this Fellowship. They were so patient with me in the months before and after the trip and while I was away. They somehow managed to juggle everything without ever weighing me down with any issues they were having back at home. This trip would also not have been possible without the support of Rebecca’s parents, John and Rosemary who do so much to support our family for which I am so very grateful. Thanks to my parents for giving me the best upbringing, education and family life that anyone could hope to have, for their ongoing love and support, and for making me the curious lifelong learner that I am. Finally, a special thanks to my dad for proof-reading this report for me. To all these generous people and the countless others who have helped me throughout this journey, I am forever in your debt. Thankyou. 4 INTRODUCTION Day One I landed in Singapore, my first stop, with some trepidation. This was not my first visit to the city state, but I nevertheless felt a sense of unease about the intensity of the eight weeks that lay ahead. As my meetings kicked off, I quickly came to see Singapore as the perfect place to start this journey of innovation discovery. By the end of my trip I would have discovered that perhaps nowhere else on earth takes such a comprehensive, structured, and centrally planned approach to innovation. Even though, on balance, I do not think this is the ideal approach, it did provide a great reference point for the cities that I was to visit over the following months. After my first week on Fellowship, I left Singapore feeling thoroughly exhausted and a bit unwell. I had started with enthusiasm and zeal. I had gone for runs each day and walked to almost every meeting in the hot and humid conditions. I was missing my family and questioning whether I had bitten off more than I could chew. Seven weeks of meetings to go… I must admit that before being awarded a Churchill Fellowship I had a limited knowledge of the role that Winston Churchill played in our history. However, I have since become engrossed in several books (see Further Reading at the end of this report) on the life and impact of Churchill and feel a strong connection to the role that international exposure, learning and connections can have on one’s outlook and ability to make a difference to society at home and abroad. It is a testament to the global citizen that Churchill was (especially for his day) that many of the places I visited on my trip have a significant historical connection to Churchill. It left me feeling like I was traveling in the footsteps of a giant and with a strong sense of duty that I hope to fulfil over the remainder of my years. Why? My background is as a scientist, a founder and an investor in early stage startups. I believe strongly in the power of innovation to improve the collective wellbeing, but I am concerned 5 about Australia’s ability to leverage innovation effectively to remain globally competitive for my children’s generation. Australia is indeed a lucky country. We are blessed with natural resources and have benefited more recently from demand for our exports due in part to our geographic position in the world, but there is no reason to think that our good fortune will last forever. It concerns me that the average age of the top five listed companies in Australia is 127 years versus 27 years in the United States. This points to a lack of ‘creative disruption’. Therefore, I decided to undertake a Churchill Fellowship, to study leading innovation ecosystems around the world, to see first-hand how Australia might do better. An obvious question is, why didn’t I visit the United States? First, I visit the US quite regularly, so I felt I had less to learn there. Second, Silicon Valley is the gold standard. Everyone wants to be ‘the next Silicon Valley’. I felt it more valuable to study how others are trying to achieve that. How? This report is a summary of my findings from the conversations that I had on my eight-week journey across Europe’s and Asia’s leading startup ecosystems. My conversations were all held under Chatham House Rule (i.e. participants are free to use the information without revealing the identity of the speaker). As such, I have avoided attributing quotes, other than to indicate the city in which I heard them, and sometimes the profession of the speaker. I have tried to validate through multiple interviews, and online research, any claims on policies and the like. If there are any errors, they probably represent changes since my interviews took place or common local misconceptions. I have a background in design thinking and decided to use that approach to information discovery on my Fellowship.

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