Director, Developer Experience and Evangelism, Microsoft Australia
At Microsoft, we are passionate about helping Australian businesses and the nation become more innovative so that we can stay internationally competitive.
Earlier this year, we launched Culturing Success: How workplace culture drives innovation at Australia’s leading SMEs – the second report in our Joined-Up Innovation project focusing on Australia’s innovation ecosystem.
Today, Microsoft is pleased to confirm the next stage of the Joined-Up Innovation initiative that focuses on Australian innovation best practice on an international scale.
Next month, we will be taking a special Australian delegation to Boston, Massachusetts in the United States of America to visit one of the world’s most innovative cities.
The delegation will include Federal and State politicians, policy makers and other participants from Australia’s innovation ecosystem including small businesses.
They will take part in a range of special meetings, events and tours to discover just how Boston became a world leader in innovation and to meet and hear first-hand from some of those who made it happen.
A key part of the trip for the delegates will be to spend time at MassChallenge, the world’s largest accelerator program. MassChallenge is all about connecting high impact start-ups with the resources they need to launch and be successful. The global accelerator program is run each year and includes a start-up competition as well as training and networking events.
The Australian delegation will hear about the MassChallenge model for success and also its international program with the aim to have 10 global cities signed up within the next five years.
A focus for our Boston delegation will be to explore the role of government and leaders in driving innovation and what can be done to support start-ups and small businesses to prosper.
It’s great timing in light of the new laws that were passed in the Australian parliament just this week that will provide a major boost for our start-ups.
The Employee Share Schemes Bill, which comes into effect on July 1, will make it much easier for start-ups to offer shares to employees. The new laws mean tax on options will now only have to be paid when they are converted to shares.
This is a big win for start-ups and another important development for Australia’s innovation framework. We congratulate the Government on this long over-due change.
The Boston trip no doubt will generate many other great ideas and discussions amongst the delegation members on how to improve our innovation system and what successful ideas from Boston could be implemented in Australia.
I’m looking forward to the trip and sharing some of those ideas with you when the delegation returns.
