Digital economy chair at QUT - an Australian first

THE PwC Chair in Digital Economy at QUT in Brisbane uses an ancient university term to describe a role that is all about the future. For a start, one person will not sit in that chair – it is a collaborative chair, and the first to be set in place in Australia.

There are many people – researchers, technologists, business leaders, futurists, students and even political leaders – who will rise from that ‘digital chair’ to help shape the digital transformation in Queensland. However an academic figurehead for the digital chair will be selected in coming months, QUT has announced, utilising Prof. Rob Perrons in the acting capacity for now. 

Sponsor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is clear about why Brisbane’s QUT campus is the ideal base for this initiative.

“Of all the cities in Australia, I can say that Brisbane and this region of South East Queenland offers by far the most collaborative environment we see,” Trent Lund, lead partner for PwC’s Innovation and Digital Ventures sector said at the launch event on April. “That gives it a huge advantage as the digital world is all about collaboration.”

Brisbane’s Chief Digital Officer, Cat Matson agreed, saying the digital chair built upon and expanded the city’s digital strategy.

“The chair is an ecosystem,” she said, “it’s not one person, it’s a collaborative team.”

Ms Matson said the PwC Chair in Digital Economy was an important and timely development for Brisbane, which could take a global lead in digital business development. She said Brisbane already had a range of global leaders in digital business – naming online accommodation leaders Wotif and Fruit Ninja mobile game developer Halfbrick Studios among others – but there were other early stage digital companies coming through that needed support to realise their potential.

“It is a challenging new business world … we have to find ways to get companies to market fast,” Ms Matson said. “After all, we don’t have five years now to get a new product to market; we have a few months before it is copied or overtaken.” 

Associate professor at QUT, Rob Perrons, who has been the acting PwC Chair in Digital Economy during the establishment phase, predicted the region could become a global leader in the development of digital business.

“This (chair) has been set up to ‘keep it real’,” Assoc. Prof. Perrons said. “We believe we can dominate in many of those subsets (of the digital economy), particularly those in which we have a lead at the moment.” He mentioned Brisbane’s collaborative environment for innovation as a significant advantage that the digital chair could help accelerate and connect with new markets.

“How about innovation as a service?” he challenged the launch audience at QUT on April 23.

Queensland Government’s Assistant Director-General for the Digital Productivity and Services Division of the Department of Science, IT and Innovation, Andrew Spina said the government was right behind the digital chair initiative.

He said it would help the Queensland Government to both participate in and lead the state’s digital transformation.

“The government has to lead in digital innovation,” Mr Spina said, “and companies will follow – but then we get out of the way.” He said the government was developing a digital capability model and had made a number of initiatives to assist the sector recently – especially its new policy that allows direct procurement from Queensland ICT companies up to a value of $500,000.

PwC Australia CEO Luke Sayers said digital technology was “absolutely fundamental to Australia’s prosperity in the years ahead”.

“Our own PwC research shows innovation and digital technologies together have the potential to increase Australia’s productivity and raise GDP by 3.5 percent and $136 billion over the next 20 years,” Mr Sayers said.

“In order to make the most of this opportunity, we need students and researchers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. For this reason we are delighted to be able to partner with innovative organisations like QUT in working towards securing Australia’s future.”

The PwC Chair in Digital Economy is a joint appointment between the QUT Business School and its Science and Engineering Faculty.

“The rapid development of the digital economy has the potential to have as big an impact on our work and society as the industrial revolution,” QUT School of Management head, Prof. Rowena Barrett said. “We are in a period of profound change and the chair will play a key role in researching how new technologies can best be harnessed to take full advantage of the opportunities in the new economy.”

QUT School of Information Systems head, Prof. Michael Rosemann, said the chair would have a research and advocacy role focused on industry engagement, policy development and thought leadership.

“We want to move from watching the digital economy to understanding it,” Prof. Rosemann said. “We want to help replace fear and entrepreneurial faith-based decisions with fact-based decision making.”

He said the chair would help to academically and strategically “lead the development and application of research-informed policies and the design of a curriculum that benefits the emerging generation of talent”.

www.chairdigitaleconomy.com.au

 

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