The Commercialisation Australia program, the successor to the Government’s COMET scheme, has proved a boon to many and a bane to others. Inevitably it was  going to have a few teething problems. As with any new incentive program, it can involve navigating the industry-specific details to work out whether it’s right for your business. Here,  Adrian Spencer  explains the pros and cons that the grant can provide for those in the technology sector.

Myth 1: CA supports Research and Development (R&D) and Commercialisation activities

Myth 2:  Aim to Double Dip

Myth 3: You can make anything seem like Pre-Commercialisation activities

Myth 4: Good ideas are better than financial security

Myth 5: The ‘Need for funding’; a Catch-22

Myth 6: Early Stage Commercialisation (ESC) is a grant that converts into a loan

SIA has long lobbied government for both Proof of Concept support as well as funding support to help ideas make it to market.

In the US, since 1983, they have had SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) grants to help escape the "Valley Of Death". SBIR grants are a 27-year-old US government initiative that steers federal dollars to small businesses working on projects that might be too risky for private investors.

This article shows how the US is taking the next steps to build on the good that SBIR grants have wrought and fill in any further funding gaps. The new measure, sponsored by Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, would create a new grant program for companies whose federal research and development dollars are drying up -- just as they begin focusing on pushing new products to market.

Right now, Tonko said, "We just take people halfway through the journey."

There is "an abundance of success stories out there," where federal R&D money has led to promising prototypes, Tonko said. "That's not the time to drop the commitment or have a modest commitment. We need a robust, passionate resolve to absorb some of the high-risk, high-reward opportunities here."

Commercialisation Australia.......where are you.......?? Read the article here.....

Sure, we’ve reared more Nobel Prize Laureates in Science than any other nation on the planet. But ask your average shopper in New York, Beijing or Helsinki to name an Australian product and you might find yourself waiting a long time for an answer.

So, is Australia a nation of innovators? For a country of our size and natural assets, are we punching above or below our weight?

Read more.....

It’s been…

• 26 months since Kevin ‘07 was handed the Prime Ministerial baton;
• 25 months since Senator Kim Carr announced his Review of the National Innovation System;
• 21 months since Commercial Ready was ‘axed’;
• 17 months since Terry Cutler handed down the outcomes of Venturous Australia;
• three months since the recommendations of the report found some semblance of form in Commercialisation Australia;
• two months since most of learned that COMET would be wound up by 31 December 2009; and,
• one month since the Australian Treasury released its Exposure Draft to reform the R&D Tax Incentive, seeking feedback by 5 February.

Read more...

By Russ Swann - Guest Editor

Unless you've been living on Mars for the last year or two, it probably hasn't escaped your notice that there is something of an economic crisis currently affecting the world's major economies. The
financial sector is suffering badly and spreading its malaise widely: manufacturing, construction, processing - no industry is recession-proof. But how is the laboratory sector faring in these troubled times?

This week in Chicago, the litmus has been applied to the sample. Pittcon (the Pittsburgh Conference, although it is never held in that city) is the biggest of the US events in our industry. It runs all this week in the 'windy city', and serves as a bellwether of the sector's virility. How then does the wind blow?

My correspondent at the exposition, Jezz Leckenby of Netdyalog, reports that it is very much an event that is trying to put on a brave face. The most positive number is the attendee pre-registrations, which are actually up 3 per cent on last year. This may have something to do with the generous discounts made available to students, academics, and unemployed scientists in the run-up, but is at least a bit of good news. There was also a good turn-out, he reports, for the opening plenary lecture from Harvard's Professor George Whitesides, which was on zero cost diagnostics. He was rather upstaged by the founder of Aldrich (Sigma Aldrich), Dr Alfred Bader. An Austrian refugee jew from WWII, Bader gave a thrilling account of his life and received the
Pittcon Heritage award.

This, though, is where the good news runs dry. Comparing more numbers, we see find total conferees down by about 300 to 7100. Exhibiting companies are about 10 per cent fewer at just over 1000, and the space
they occupy is down by about 20 per cent, counting the number of actual stands. This is reflected in a 22 per cent drop in exhibition personnel, and a similar fall in the number of media delegates.

These numbers have turned the litmus red, but it has to be said that it isn't a very deep red. I have written before about how the laboratory sector is better placed than many industries to ride out the economic storm, and the news from Chicago really supports this: if the numbers are holding up so well in these conditions, perhaps the outlook is not so bleak after all.

Laboratory Equipment Australia