Are high house prices good or bad for innovation? It seems the RBA are saying house asset inflation is good for Australia, perhaps mainly based around housing stock shortages. Our Executive Director, Christopher Hire, takes a look at property prices impact on innovation, and how they may prevent tomorrow’s employers – today’s start-ups – emerging.

Super-fast Internet is the new ‘Wealth of Nations’ – enabling innovation competitive advantage & improving destination desirability; failure is not an option.

Shared Services as Innovation. Jack Cassidy, MD of Bearing Point raised this as enabling collaborative innovation. Good point.

Conroy opened CeBIT AusInnovate, with National Broadband Network for Australia. Then the detail – CSIRO & DSTO – the need not to kill innovation… highlights from CeBIT in Sydney.

Our Executive Director, Christopher Hire’s LIVE innovation analysis from CeBIT Asia Pacific; on this journal, twitter & social media.

If you’re new here at 2thinknow, and you’re interested in the latest ideas on trends, companies and innovation, subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for your visit!COMMENT. Melbourne — A colleague of mine, of mature age, a professional director, told me he does not understand one thing about Melbourne’s directors.
How so many directors keep getting roles with less than stellar performance.
As a competent, good Director, he is mystified.
Shhh…
Of course no-one in the community says this publicly. I am a member of peak body AICD, and never heard it …

COMMENT, NSW — Today the NSW government release the mini-budget. ABC have it here.
A patch/hatchet job to make up for years of fundamental neglect.
The 3 Amigos: Carr, Iemma, Costa.
Neglect under Bob Carr (especially), Morris Iemma & on to Nathan Rees.OK, Nathan hasn’t had a chance yet.
A special word goes to the spectacularly self-aggrandising Michael Costa. Costa managed to leave fingerprints 3 inches deep on several disastrous portfolios.
Infrastructure.
In an economic & property boom, no funding was spent on:
1) Transport
2) Schools
3) Infrastructure
4) Urban Planning
5) Roads
6) Energy infrastructure.
Wasted opportunity.
Property Developers.
Instead, the whole process …

COMMENT, Melbourne — It seems politicians at the State Level in Australia are determined to destroy local manufacturing.
Consistently the Victorian Government in Melbourne, & NSW Government in Sydney import trains & trams rolling stock.
According to The Age, $3.6 Billion dollars of import orders in the last 18 months.
For citizens.
The imported trains & trams often have problem working in different climates, on different rails, and with different power requirments.
Furthermore, the seats in imported trams provide less effective seating, being often too small for the Australian market.
For local manufacturing.
If the Governments do …

COMMENT, Australia – The International Monetary Fund have just said that property prices in Australia, like the UK, are so intrinsically overpriced as to be a high risk to fall.
Long-time readers will know that I have been predicting this fall for some time. Friends will recall I have held the belief that Australian property has been strongly overvalued in recent years.
Why will house prices fall in Australia?
Property in Australia is globally overvalued. It is simply more expensive to purchase or rent an equivalent home here than most other cities …

REVIEWS, SYDNEY — When in Sydney, unless frequenting exclusive restaurants or suburban secrets, it is hard to find a decent food at any price. Reasonable prices in the city are harder.
In nearby Melbourne, it is easy to have a good-size quality meal in small café venues. There are Melbourne city venues where you can get decent lunch specials of classics like veal for $10 or $15 a plate (about 6-8 EUROs), the latter with a glass of wine.
Prego, in Melbourne CBD on Collins St, has one such special.
In …

COMMENT, USA, Australia – Let’s start with the USA economy.
US sliding into a chasm
The debate on whether the US economy is in recession or not seems to be over.
The bear is among us.

For months people have been standing up that the US economy is not as bad as first believed. The US recession was predicted by 2thinknow in December 2007, using our innovation models.
Before Christmas, many were sitting on the fence. I called this recession, in this journal, in straightforward terms before Goldman Sachs, or UN made their announcements.
Of course …

ANALYSIS, Global — In many Western countries, as well as elsewhere in the world speeding has become popular.
It gets dangerous when aggressive drivers speed in suburban streets where young children play. It is playing dice with school-children’s lives.
And I have lost count of how many times I have almost been run over in the city. Especially by aggressive taxi drivers.
My aging mother has also been almost hit by 4 wheel drives 3 times in a 6 week period last year crossing at a zebra crossing.
In Melbourne, Australia, aggressive driving is …

COMMENT, Sydney – I was staying in the Crowne Plaza Parramatta again last night.
In the next room, someone was smoking drugs.

SATIRE, Global – I have noticed a new fad in offices I have been visiting lately.

Need to look like you’re into your job?
Want to look like you care?
Want to disguise the fact you’re lazy?
That a chimpanzee could do your job?

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Having retired at a graceful hour last night, I was hoping for a good night’s sleep.Not possible.

The nice view I had of Darling Harbour, was interrupted (like everything in Sydney) by 24/7 traffic.

TRAVEL COMMENT, Sydney — Tonight I am in the glamorous Sydney, in the Four Points Sheraton at Darling Harbour (actually the old Hotel Nikko).
After having spent my day in the not so glamorous suburban Parramatta.

COMMENT, Global – Which cities have the best espresso coffee in the world?
Well we may have some ideas about which have the worst… But the best?
Before we get to that let’s look at some interesting facts and insights about why coffee is important…

COMMENT, Australia — Normally I don’t do this.
Make predictions, that is (in public, yet!).
However I am testing innovation models used for prediction. My innovation analysis though shows 3 likely outcomes for Australia.

(Photo by Ester Inbar )

COMMENT, Sydney, Parramatta – APEC is over and the last of the politicians has gone home. So I am back in not-so-central Parramatta.
Parramatta is the demographic heart of broader Sydney, being the secondary centre and a major work and residential hub.
The tale of two Sydney’s
APEC Sydney.
Glitzy. Glam. Harbour. Flashy. If you have money and a local on your arm a good place to dine out. Not my taste, but popular. If you like LA, you’ll like Sydney.
Add to that the Eastern beaches and the leafy green North shore. (When …

COMMENT, Global – Often that is just too much information. Cell phone users in public often have little discretion.
Cell phones on trains.
Cell phones (or mobiles if you prefer) in restaurants.
Famously, I once heard a man chatting up a woman in a toilet cubicle with the door closed at a cinema. I first thought she was in there with him, then he came out holding a phone.
I wonder what she thought of the loud ‘flush’?
The Market Opportunity for Quiet
Expect a pendulum swing back to quiet and focus.
In the meantime expect a …