The release of the Australian Government’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development—Ambitious Australia—marks one of the most significant attempts in recent decades to reset the nation’s research, development and innovation (RD&I) system. Positioned as a once-in-a-generation reform agenda, the report calls for a coordinated, mission-led system that connects research, industry, capital, and government to drive long-term economic prosperity.
At its core, the report recognises a structural truth that has long been acknowledged but insufficiently acted upon: Australia is not fully translating its research strength into economic and societal impact. It diagnoses fragmentation, declining investment, weak industry engagement, and a system overly focused on inputs rather than outcomes. It proposes a new architecture – national innovation pillars, mission-driven initiatives, and a stronger coordinating centre – to address these challenges.
Drawing on our work across universities, industry, and government, these are Research Strategies Australia’s initial reflections on what the SERD report gets right, where it falls short, and what it will actually take to deliver the transformation it calls for.
The most striking feature of the report is not its ambition, but its familiarity. The core themes – coordination, focus, translation, industry engagement – have been articulated consistently across multiple reviews over the past two decades.
“My first impressions reading through it were primarily that most of the ideas that are in there have been surfaced before… going back to the Productivity Commission review and then Cutler and other failed initiatives.” - Tim Cahill
This is not a criticism of the analysis itself, which is largely sound. It is a critique of the system’s inability to act on what it already knows.
The report calls for “bold, nation-changing reform” and warns against incrementalism, yet the structure of its recommendations risks reproducing the same pattern: layering new coordination mechanisms onto an already complex system without fundamentally shifting how decisions are made, how resources are allocated, or how accountability is enforced.
The central tension is this: ambition has been elevated rhetorically, but the mechanisms required to enforce strategic discipline remain underdeveloped. Without that discipline, the system will continue to diffuse effort across too many priorities, too many programs, and too many actors—precisely the condition the report seeks to address.
The introduction of six National Innovation Pillars – health, agriculture, defence, environment, resources, and technology – is presented as a mechanism for focus and scale. In practice, it raises a deeper and largely unaddressed issue: these priorities imply a fundamental reshaping of Australia’s economic structure.
“What it implies is an actual shift in our industrial base in order for it to be realised… shifting out of our service-based economy into high value industries that we don’t have a large footprint in.” - Tim Cahill
This is not a marginal adjustment. It is a structural transformation.
Australia’s economy remains heavily concentrated in services and resource-based exports, with relatively low economic complexity compared to global peers. The report acknowledges this implicitly, but does not fully engage with the scale of transition required to move into globally competitive, high-value industries where incumbents are already deeply entrenched.
There is also a notable omission: many of Australia’s largest and fastest-growing sectors, particularly in services, are not explicitly represented in the proposed pillars, despite their central role in employment and economic output.
The result is a strategy that gestures toward transformation without fully confronting the trade-offs it entails, including where Australia will compete, where it will not, and how it will manage the transition from existing strengths to future capabilities.
A central recommendation of the report is the establishment of a National Innovation Council to coordinate the system and drive alignment across government, industry, and research.
The intent is sound. The risk is that coordination becomes symbolic rather than operational.
“This is long-term structural reform… but there are still questions around where this is actually headed, what it looks like at the end, and what the investment required is to get it there.” - Adrian Collins
The history of Australian RD&I reform is replete with coordination bodies that lacked the authority, funding control, or political mandate to drive real change. Without control over major funding streams or the ability to reallocate resources at scale, any central body risks becoming another layer in an already crowded governance landscape.
The report acknowledges the need for consolidation, highlighting over 150 Commonwealth programs, but stops short of specifying how funding will actually be restructured, reduced, or redirected at scale.
This is where reform efforts typically stall. The political and institutional costs of consolidation are high, and without explicit commitment to making those trade-offs, coordination alone will not achieve the focus the report demands.
Perhaps the most critical gap in the report lies not in its structural proposals, but in its assumptions about behaviour.
The report assumes that once priorities are set, actors across the system – universities, researchers, businesses – will align accordingly. Experience suggests otherwise.
“My experience on the ground is that a lot of people, particularly individual researchers, don’t necessarily feel like they need to change anything… they just loosely tie to a pillar and continue business as usual.” - Willo Boniface
Systems do not change because structures are redesigned; they change because incentives, expectations, and consequences are altered in ways that shift behaviour.
Without strong mechanisms to direct funding, enforce prioritisation, and reward alignment, the likely outcome is that existing activities will simply be reframed within new language. The pillars will become labels rather than drivers of change.
The report gestures toward this challenge—calling for cultural change and outcome-focused metrics—but does not fully articulate how behavioural alignment will be achieved across a highly decentralised and autonomous system.
One of the most persistent narratives in Australian RD&I policy is that the system suffers from underinvestment. While this is partly true, it is not the full story.
Australia already invests significantly in research and development, including substantial private sector expenditure supported through mechanisms such as the R&D Tax Incentive.
The issue is not simply the quantum of investment, but how effectively that investment flows through the system.
“I don’t think the scheme fundamentally is the issue… the lever isn’t to change the scheme, it’s to fix the pipeline, to fix the communication barriers, and the friction that stops money flowing from the private sector into the higher education sector.” - Willo Boniface
This aligns with a broader pattern we see across the system: capability exists, investment exists, and demand exists but the interfaces between them are inefficient, opaque, and often misaligned.
This is not a funding problem. It is a design problem.
The report recognises fragmentation as a core issue but does not fully resolve how the system will be redesigned to reduce friction at scale, particularly at the critical interface between industry and research.
Much of the report’s focus is on startups, venture capital, and large-scale national initiatives. While these are important, they overlook a critical segment of the economy: mid-sized, innovation-active firms.
“The support mechanisms are very focused on startups and VC… but it’s missing that middle layer of mid-size innovative businesses and how to incentivise them to take more risk.” - Philip Doyle
This “missing middle” is where much of the practical translation of research into commercial outcomes occurs. These firms are large enough to invest in innovation, but often lack the incentives, support structures, or risk appetite to do so at scale.
Ignoring this segment risks creating a system that is strong at early-stage innovation and large-scale missions, but weak in the intermediate layer where ideas are actually developed, scaled, and integrated into the economy.
The report correctly identifies government procurement as a critical lever for driving innovation, proposing that governments prioritise Australian RD&I in their purchasing decisions.
This is one of the most powerful – and consistently underutilised – tools available.
However, as Doyle pointed out, intent alone is insufficient:
“I don’t believe that will happen… unless there’s a portion of funding that must be spent on this, procurement choices will not change.”
Procurement reform has been recommended repeatedly yet rarely implemented in ways that materially shift behaviour. Without explicit mandates, dedicated budgets, and accountability mechanisms, procurement will continue to prioritise cost, risk minimisation, and established suppliers over innovation.
If government is serious about acting as a catalyst for RD&I, it must move beyond aspiration to enforcement, embedding innovation requirements directly into procurement frameworks and performance expectations.
The Ambitious Australia report is not flawed in its diagnosis. It correctly identifies the need for focus, scale, coordination, and stronger translation of research into economic outcomes. It articulates a compelling vision of a more productive, knowledge-driven economy.
The risk lies elsewhere.
The risk is that, in the absence of hard decisions – on funding consolidation, institutional roles, behavioural incentives, and economic priorities – the system absorbs these recommendations without fundamentally changing.
The report itself warns against incrementalism and “band-aid solutions.” The challenge now is whether the system is willing to do what it has historically avoided: make trade-offs, concentrate resources, and enforce strategic discipline.
Because ambition, on its own, is not enough.
Australia does not lack ideas, capability, or opportunity. It lacks the mechanisms to align them at scale.
If this reform agenda is to succeed, it will require more than new structures and new language. It will require a willingness to reconfigure the system in ways that are politically and institutionally difficult, but strategically necessary.
The coming decade will determine whether Australia remains a high-performing research system with limited economic translation, or becomes a globally competitive innovation economy.
We recorded our full discussion on the report, exploring these themes in more detail, including where we believe the real leverage points lie.
We acknowledge the Dharawal people as the Traditional Owners of this land and pay our respects to Elders past and present. This is, was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
