The Hunter Innovation scene is on the verge of exponential growth - all the pieces needed for driving a growing, globally competitive, diverse economy fuelled by leading edge knowledge is here. Pretty soon we will be talked about as an overnight success – one of those ten years in the making overnight successes. Many experienced, passionate and dedicated innovators have been working hard over the last few years to get to this point, and now they can see it all coming together to drive visible impact. As a Newby to Newie I am thrilled to be part of it, and have been asked to share what I have noticed in my first few months here.

 

Successful ecosystems have many similar ingredients – a world class university, engaged companies that want to innovate, support programs for startup growth, funding, entrepreneurs and an entrepreneurial culture for instance – and from what I have seen the Hunter has them all. The additional standouts for me have been the large number of Small-and-Medium sized companies (SMEs) that are innovating their way into becoming globally competitive, the predominance of technology based startups and SMEs, the diversity of support programs and innovation communities, the strong engagement of the University of Newcastle (UON), and the integration of the creative sector.

 

Every innovation meetup or event I go to have a new group of people to get to know, and creatives see themselves as key to the region’s innovation success. I haven’t seen that in similar sized ecosystems and it will be important for our success. UON – an ideas factory for the Hunter - is fully committed to engaging with the region’s companies and community to grow our social and economic infrastructure, and our vision statement says this. Not many universities actually commit to this, but UON has, and visibly so – our innovation hubs and the innovation programs

they run are one demonstration of that.

 

The fact that the Hunter is building on our history and our strengths will make a big difference for us. The Hunter has over a century of manufacturing innovation under its belt – it is great to see the growth of high-tech companies that will lead to advanced manufacturing thriving here. Local government is also playing an important role – the smart city initiatives, the Hunter Innovation Project, the Regional Incubator program to name just a few crucial initiatives that they drive and support.

 

For the next phase I think there will be two important activities we need to get right: Collaboration and Communication. Communication that attracts innovative companies, entrepreneurs and investors (thanks HBR for getting the ball rolling); collaboration that means more can be done with what we have, fast.

 

We have all the pieces, we just need to bring them together and tell our story to make sure our overnight success has impact, and Australian innovators see the Hunter as a great place to innovate and grow.