Innovation Program Design Research

Overview

This project looked to gain deep knowledge, insights and learnings of Australia’s efforts in innovation and innovation support programs in emerging economies to complement, and further enhance Aus4Innovation’s capabilities, plan and impact in Vietnam.

The challenge

There is currently little comprehensive understanding of what other areas of the Australian government are doing to support innovation in emerging economies. Recent shifts in innovation program design from a traditional ‘one size fits all’ approach to more bespoke, adaptable strategies have made it challenging to understand the effectiveness and impact of these programs. Furthermore, it’s becoming more difficult to ensure mutual benefit between program partners and to communicate the effectiveness and importance of innovation programs to funders.

The Project

Partnering with CSIRO’s Aus4Innovation team together, we:

• Identified 170+ past, current and emerging innovation and innovation support programs

• Developed a model to categorise these innovation programs and assessed 60+ programs in detail.

• Conducted interviews with key stakeholders and leaders/managers of innovation programs

• Developed 4 case studies with learnings relevant to innovation program design

• Synthesised our findings into program principles to guide future implementation

The Result

From the rigorous desktop research and engagement with stakeholders of several innovation programs, a set of key program principles, learnings specific to innovation programs, as well as a set of pillars of success and indicators of risk were developed. These outputs will help drive the future design implementation of Aus4Innovation.

170+

Programs assessed across...

20+

Countries while engaging...

13

Stakeholders across the globe.

12

insights into international program design and implementation

4

pillars of success and 4 indicators of risk in innovation programs

7

insights into the 'uniqueness' of international innovation programs

1

innovation landscape model, including 5 categories of mutually beneficial program design

The Future

In the future, Aus4Innovation will have a clear understanding of the Australian international innovation program landscape, including a more accurate picture of Aus4Innovation’s value proposition within this landscape. More importantly, Aus4Innovation is equipped with the most up to date knowledge on innovation program design, and future activities of Aus4Innovation activities will embed this knowledge to increase relevance and impact of the program in the future.

What we delivered

• Desktop research

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Program assessment and categorisation

• Case study development

• Innovation program landscape model

• Pillars of program success and indicators of program risk

• Insights into program design and implementation