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Biotech enters the Australian immigration debate
By Michelle Gallaher, CEO, BioMelbourne Network. Published 27 April 2010 on the Invest Victoria, Countdown to BIO Blog.
If Australia is to embrace and fully support innovation, the first item on the ‘must have’ check list is skills. Having the right people who can translate good ideas to commercial success. Australia has a wealth of good ideas, research and discovery ambition, but we honestly don’t have enough of a skill pool to draw from to drive the our vast collection of good ideas to the market.
Any investor will tell you that it’s frequently the people running a company who are the most important predictor of commercial success, not necessarily the technology. First class people will always attract investment.
I have heard investors say this a number of times – that Australia needs to strongly encourage skilled migration. We need to attract highly experienced commercialization and technology managers from the US and European markets as well as lure back experienced and successful expatriates if we are to ensure a ‘fair go’ for our swag of local discoveries.
Australians should be encouraged to travel overseas, to pursue advanced education opportunities, to gain business experience in success and failure, and then come back. I guess the hard part, people might argue, is the ‘getting them back’ bit. We need to facilitate quality continuing education in Australia for the innovation sector, reward and grow business mentoring and advance the pool of talent that we already have in our biotech industry today. I think we have made some extraordinary progress in improving options for ongoing education in the last three years.
I don’t subscribe to the ‘brain drain mentality’. This position screams desperation and a myopic point of view. Proponents of this fear-based rhetoric demonstrate their inability to recognize the international context of innovation, particularly in research and biotechnology. I believe we should celebrate our talent being seeded across the world. It demonstrates our skill in education and career development, that Australian innovators and researchers are so well respected and sought after. Our task is to ensure when great people leave they feel welcome to return, that we retain the contact, exploit the relationship, establish new international collaborations to ensure they remain engaged with Australian innovation. Frequently tell them of the growing success of Australians at home. Give them a reason to return.
The more Australia engages with the international innovation community, as they must, the lower the barriers will be for talented Australians to go and then return, and the higher the chances will be for us to retain talent in our country
Biotech is a global technology therefore movement across borders is essential to Australia’s innovation success. Let’s put the call out not just for tourism dollars, but for skilled migrants and expatriates to boost our human resource capability in building a knowledge economy. By the way – congratulations to all Australians working in research and innovation overseas. We are very proud of you and looking forward to seeing you back here sometime soon. Call me.
