The mind is our greatest natural resource

AUSTRALIA, now is the time for us to move from an economy based on mines to one based on minds. google_ad_section_end(name=story_introduction)
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Our higher degree science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates are Australia’s next great resource boom…..
In most industrialised countries more than 70 per cent of researchers are employed in industry.

Australia lags with only 30 per cent — we have one of the lowest numbers of researchers applying their skills in the private sector in the developed world…….

Australia needs creative thinkers to have the big ideas — the STEM intellects whose “aha” moment will be the next Wi-Fi, the next Cochlear implant or the next clean energy source. Australia also needs the commercial know-how to make these ideas a reality, to bring them out of universities and into the wider world where society can benefit from them.