Since the 1950’s innovation has shaped the face of Australia.

Some of the key effects of innovation in Australia have included:

• Telephone connectivity
• Motor Vehicle ownership due to price reduction
• Electricity and gas distribution
• Reticulated sewerage
• National health coverage
• Growth in the number of enrolments in tertiary education institutions
• The suburbanisation of urban areas including:
• Rapid growth in the number of detached dwellings on relatively large land parcels
• Introduction of shopping malls
• Segregation of land use types effectively introducing a requirement to travel to jobs
• Growth in domestic and international air travel
  Growth in farm sizes with new agricultural equipment and new production techniques

The National Innovation Systems Review (NISR) Report (2008) argued that innovation in Australia intensified in the 1980’s after an extended period of decline in innovation performance and the associated fall in our relative prosperity in the 1970’s.

Innovation is best measured in terms of productivity growth. The report argues that around 2002, Australian productivity went from growing faster than most countries in the OECD to considerably slower than the average.

The NISR report also argues that, if the economic geography of global production had not encountered seismic shifts towards India and China, (2 of our major trading partners), Australia would have felt the effects of our complacency more directly as falling living standards, business and technological innovation are only a part of the innovation spectrum.

Social Innovation,– developing new and sustainable ways to meet previously unseen or unmet social issues  has now developed a worldwide organisation – The Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) The Australian branch (ASIX) aims to create a platform for people and organisations to connect, communicate and then collaborate in the search for new ways to address such social inequality and disadvantage.