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Shared Value and Australia’s ‘Ideas Boom’

December 14, 2015

 

The government’s newly released innovation statement places shared value front and centre on the nation’s agenda as an opportunity for companies to innovate and grow in order to create competitive advantage.

It brings to light many avenues for companies to navigate a shared value agenda while actively pursuing an innovation strategy.

Shared value aligns with Australia’s innovation agenda across the four key areas:

  • Taking the leap – By aligning social issues with business opportunities, shared value provides Australia with a framework to take the leap and “embrace risk, pursue ideas, learn from mistakes, and for Australian investors to back these ideas”.
  • Working together – “For Australia, collaboration is about our brightest minds … and business working together to create novel solutions”. Shared value has already shown many leading Australian organisations the tremendous opportunities for innovation and growth in treating social problems as business objectives, and many are already collaborating across sectors to solve key issues in society and create collective value. 
  • Best and brightest – “The talent and skills of our people is the engine behind Australia’s innovative capacity”. Shared value increases Australia’s innovative capacity by encouraging talented people from a range of sectors to work together on critical issues, and tap into their collective scale and resources.
  • Leading by example – Shared value relies on government “becoming more innovative in delivering services, sharing data and making it easier for business to trade and work with” them. Through programs such as DFAT’s Business Partnership Platform, which combine social and commercial return, government will incentivise more organisations in pursuing shared value initiatives.

While innovation and shared value are both critical to a strong economy, they also help us maintain our relatively high standard of living and provide a framework to tackle the many social issues we face as a developed nation.

For more information on shared value visit sharedvalue.org.au