Growing Innovation from Within: The Sunshine Coast’s Next Big Businesses with Colin Graham

Full Transcript

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

G’day and welcome back to another episode of the Coast and Commerce podcast. This is the show where we bring inspiring business leaders to you to help you in whatever you do in business here on the Sunshine Coast. And one of those leaders here we’ve got is someone who’s been quite heavily entrenched in the world of business and supporting other businesses here on the coast for quite a while. Yeah. Colin Graham from Causeway Innovation. Colin, welcome to the show. Can you share a little bit about who you are and like, what’s your history?

supporting businesses here on the Sunshine Coast. Okay, so originally from near Belfast, in Northern Ireland as you might spot, background really combines like marketing, innovation, engaging talent, which is bit of a different area. So I did a marketing degree up in Glasgow in Scotland, which was amazing and fun. And then after that, I got a job near London with Dulux, which at the time was a sort of top 50 global consumer brand. And walked into that job first day, you know, they give you the papers and so on. got a

$2 million budget straight away. You go, that’s handy, can use that. But the funny thing is before I worked for Dulux, I knew I was going to leave. So I had a friend, Alastair, who was a finance graduate, I was a marketing graduate. And we both kind of shook hands before finishing uni and said, let’s start a business together, but we’ll do it in three years time. We’ll go and get some experience first, which actually in reflection was a good idea. So he went to Citibank in Zurich and Vienna.

I went to Dulux in beautiful Slough near, but lived in London, not quite as glamorous as Zurich and Vienna. And we kind of did our day jobs, but we also began to plan setting up our own business. And two years, nine months after starting Dulux, left, skipped down the stairs singing, can see clearly now, absolutely literally. And we drove up to Glasgow, my little red Ford Fiesta, sold the car for three or four thousand pounds. That was my startup fund.

And we got started in a business called Yellowbrick Training Development, which was focused on recruiting and training graduates. And we grew that pretty well in the UK. And also we actually grew through a couple of projects, some very significant clients in Canada and the US, across the US. And after about four years, we were acquired by a bigger company that had interests in the UK and in the US. We fit it very well with them. And then I worked for the company in Oxford, which is Career Innovation, which works with about 20 of the biggest companies in the world, like Prasar, Cooper, Unilever, et cetera.

And that company is still going strong. And it was about developing a more innovative business culture. So that was this innovation theme emerging in my career and life. And then I kind of skipped from being more of an entrepreneur or director of an entrepreneurial firm to being a business advisor for a uni up in Aberdeen, which is very cold, up in Scotland. so I set up an incubator there entirely and that students and graduates, which went well. And then I happened to be at a conference in

San Jose, I think it was in California, yeah, San Jose, part of Silicon Valley in California, about innovation, there’s about a thousand people there, and one of them was Professor Paul Thomas, who was the founding vice chancellor of the University of Sunshine Coast. And he was partly there to take a look and see if he could find a founding CEO of the Innovation Center. And I didn’t meet him, but one of my friends over breakfast at the conference, she just said, Colin, just heard the most perfect job for you. And I said, what is it, what is it?

And so she told me what it was and said that that is the most perfect job for me. It’s working with startups. It’s a startup university. In many ways, it’s sort of startup region in terms of business. That is for me. I’m going to go, I’m going to go for three to five years. And that was like 23 years ago. So I stayed and got married and so on. Well, a bit warmer than Aberdeen. Well, Aberdeen I left, was minus five and arrived here was plus 32. So was a bit of a shock.

I ran the Innovation Center for about 10 years, which was great because we helped start about 85 businesses. And it was really good in terms of developing a strong network with investors and service firms, with the uni, with government and so on, give you bit of an overview. But I kind of began to think, well, what would happen if you blew the roof off this place? Because it’s a physical place. And lots of cool things happen because you’ve got a lot of cool companies, you’ve got investors.

who put in about 35 million to the companies when I was there. Because they knew it was a hub of talent, they knew there was some good companies there to look at. Because for every company that we accepted, we probably said no to maybe five or seven, because we were trying to find tech growth around the companies, for example. So I was kind of thinking, well, what if we blew the roof off this place? And how could you encourage innovation in regions? What can you do if you don’t live in London or New York or?

Sydney or whatever, what can you do? And so I decided to leave and be more of sort of born free agent type of person again. I read this book by Daniel Pinkacle, Free Agent, I go, yep, I’ll do that. That’s me. Sounds like me, yeah. just, I kind of had enough of, know, sort of bigger corporate type of structures and I wanted to be more full of my own interests and passion and make my own way again. So left that about.

2012, so that’s 13 years or so running Causeway Innovation and its focus is entirely on developing innovative businesses and regions. I’ve got a perhaps perverse interest in regions because it’s a tough area because nobody sort of lines up and goes, right, I’ll buy one. Give me a good region, please. You know, it’s complex type of area. But I really like, I think it’s a very important area to think about how can we develop both innovative businesses and innovative regions outside those sort of mega.

cities. So that’s what I’ve been focused on for last 10 plus years. Excellent. So tell me in that 20 something years that you’ve been on the Sunshine Coast and with that through current of innovation underneath everything that you’re focused on and doing, like what do you see and what have you seen change in the Sunshine Coast region as a place for innovation? Well, it’s definitely improving, but it’s still got a long way to go as my view.

I’ve been one of the biggest champions of innovation, et on the coast, but I’m also pretty realistic about where we’re at. There’s been a lot of developments. Obviously, if you look at things which are part of the ingredients, like something like the university, when I started here, it was 4,000 students. It’s now got 18,000 students. Over time, that’s going to play out in a very positive way for the region because they’re one of the biggest sources of value from

a regional university is the students who become graduates who may go off to Sydney or London or wherever and get a bit of experience and have a lot of fun, which is cool. should do that. But if they realize that there is some sort of intelligent business life here and they can come back and either work for them or start their own, that’s important. But other things happening, there’s, think some of the biggest things are infrastructure. you know, look at things again, these are,

fundamental pieces of the jigsaw for the long term and nothing like this is an overnight sensation. But things like the expansion of the airport, which will lead into international flights, it already is in New Zealand, but will go into Singapore, etc. ultimately. And that’s already having big benefits. Just a small example, I’ve got a client company I work with down in Sydney and I can actually get from my house in Coulomb to the airport, to the middle of Sydney, quicker than I can, many occasions to Brisbane. So that flight connection is important.

Obviously the expansion of the hospital around not too far from here, which is probably about $3 billion in the ground. Again, that’s an asset to build upon. The development of CBD, which has got a little bit of a, had a bit of a slow start, but now it’s going actually very well. Slow start’s normal because you’ve got to do things like infrastructure and roads and sewage and planning. That’s all normal, but it’s actually getting out of the ground well now. And think that’s going to be an asset.

things like the submarine cable again will be an asset. again, at the same time, it is an asset. But at same time, I continually meet businesses who have got really, really terrible crappy mobile phone reception, internet reception. And we’ve got to fix those. So a lot of the recipes for success in terms of an innovative region are happening because most innovative regions do have a significant university as a source of talent. Obviously, places like MIT where I’ve

of being a few times. Both the students start businesses and staff, a lot of the staff are very entrepreneurial, they start businesses and they’re allowed and encouraged to start businesses. So ultimately that will happen. So I think there’s more things happening. I think one of the biggest things recently was in about 2020 with COVID, that accelerated the development. So a lot of people who were entrepreneurial people or investors, for example, who lived in Sydney and Melbourne, particularly.

decided that there’s a big push factor, particularly in Melbourne, and they’d come here. So that did give quite a big injection. I’ve looked, I’ve got a little spreadsheet of locally based investors, and I’ve got about 20. And they’re primarily people who live in places like Coulomb or wherever, Nusa, but they’re venture capital firm in Sydney or Melbourne or elsewhere. But they’re now here. And again, that’s an opportunity.

There’s been quite a lot of development, also you look at some of the, like a company like UE, which has developed around the university. A guy was there when that was, I helped actually get $12 million worth of fiber into the ground around there, which would have helped attract companies like that. So that’s not a startup anymore by any means, but that has grown to probably a thousand plus staff.

And also if you look at the coast, actually have got this, again, this little sort of hidden industry of insurance, auto in general here with budget direct. You’ve got Ambrose, which is just an absolutely amazing innovative firm in the sort of insurance repair type of space. And there’s a bunch of other small insurance firms. you’ve got a little, some of those are quite significant and other significant firms would include people like Country Chef, which is fairly recent arrival.

Gourmet Gardens, which obviously goes back probably 20 years plus. So we’re beginning to have some very, very credible players such as that, but still quite a bit to go, I would say. And one of the biggest issues that can maybe talk about as well, believe it or not, is the Sunshankos brand. That’s not only a positive thing. Yeah, a few things I think I want to dive into there. think the bigger overarching question here for

for those watching and listening is, particularly for those business owners who maybe don’t consider themselves in a innovative company or a startup or a high growth potential company, for those businesses or even for just the residents of the Sunshine Coast, what’s the economic and regional benefit to fostering innovation and growing innovation in business on the Sunshine Coast? Okay, well there’s lots of benefits.

For the businesses that want to grow and so on, and not all of them do, and that’s absolutely fine, you can choose. Choose option A or blue pill, red pill, whatever you want to do. But for the businesses that do want to grow, innovation is one of the biggest sources. innovation in Australia gets a bit of a funny rap because the government promote it and so on, and it gets a bit confused as to what it is. But it’s simply about developing and implementing new ideas of value.

And there are lots of ways you can do that. You can do it in your products, you can do it in your service, you can do it in your financial model. Like you look at Ambrose constructions, I haven’t physically visited their site, but I’ve seen again videos about what they’re up to. And they’re taking the time that if you make an insurance claim, your roof is blown off or something, a normal insurance company might address all that and deal with that and so on.

50 or 60 days, and they’ve got it down to about 15 or 16 days. So they’re getting through more business. They’re getting through more efficient. They’ve got many, many more staff. Generally speaking, innovative companies are making more money because they’re developing something that’s got a bit of a premium and people will pay for it. Also, their staff are getting better paid, which leads to recruiting good people and keeping good people.

So lots of benefits and then as I mentioned this earlier, think before we went online here is there is a spillover effect. So for every job or every business that’s creating a job with a fairly high value payment, that’s got a spin-off effect. It’s got a spin-off effect on people like gardening or cleaners, but also it’s got a spin-off effect on lawyers or accountants or web developers or digital marketing firms, et cetera.

So if we have a higher base of innovative companies doing, particularly ones who trading outside the region, which is really important because they’re bringing in new money to the region, then that’s lifting the whole region. Some people say there’s a very Enrico Morieto, I think he’s called, like a US academic. He claims like every high-paid job in a region can spark off about four others. I think that’s a bit of an over-claim, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s two or three.

There’s big benefits. I guess the final benefit as well is for like, you know, I’ve got a daughter who’s 11 and many people have got kids and grandkids. If we want to, if we want younger people in the region to have the option to work for a company that’s doing some really exciting work, is rewarding, is pushing things, and that’s also financially rewarding, you know, that’s very important as well, I think. Yeah. For everything, Yeah, excellent. So,

You know, when it comes to innovative businesses and you mentioned Ambrose construction there, I’ll just call back to, I think it’s season three, episode eight of the coast and commerce podcast, where we had a very in-depth chat with Anthony from Ambrose construction there. So lots of innovations and innovative stuff happening. Country chef as well, former guests on the show here. So, you know, I encourage people watching to go back and watch them as well. when we, when we think about the, you know, the.

ecosystem of innovative businesses here on the coast. Like you’ve clearly identified the benefit of growing innovation and building innovative businesses here. When it comes to economic and political policy, often you see that those in politics are seeking to kind of attract businesses to the region, Like, they want another Yui here on the coast, right? Something like that, right?

But you’ve mentioned to me before this idea of economic gardening rather than growing, sorry, attracting businesses. Can you talk to us about that idea of economic gardening? Not your phrase, but tell us It’s a funny phrase, but it’s also very true. what it kind of, what it, partly what it meant, let’s go back a little bit, like quite a lot of regions and cities around the world like cutting big red ribbons. So, you know, company X shows up and the mayor goes and they cut a red ribbon and all looks great.

And it is great. It’s good. But often those companies don’t grow as big as they kind of promised they would do. And they’re only an isolated company. that kind of idea has been called economic hunting. So it’s getting out and about. And it’s all part of the mix. There’s no absolute right and wrong way to do it. But the economic gardening idea came out of Colorado, Pisco Lipson. And I recently spoke to Chris Gibbons, who’s the founder of that sort of movement.

And it’s all about what they discovered and many other studies around the world have discovered the same sort of thing is they discovered in their business base, which is a suburb of Denver, they discovered around about three to 5 % of the business base was creating most of the jobs. A similar study in the UK, which looked at every single business over a 10 year period in the UK, a massive study, they found that 6 % of the growth around two businesses were creating over 50 % of the jobs. the idea is that

In our existing business base, there’s a bunch of companies who’ve got beyond the startups and survival type of stage. They have survived, they’ve done something well to get to that stage. So those companies, particularly companies on the coast that are maybe over 10 staff, but even over about six, seven staff in this type of environment, a lot of those companies have got the biggest potential for growth and creating new jobs in a region like the Sunshine Coast. So part of the idea is to

is to figure out how can you help. There can be a lot of attention on attracting the big businesses and that’s all part of the mix, that’s fine. And there can be lot of attention on startups, but here’s the but, the biggest potential is already sitting in your doorstep. They’re already here. And particularly if those businesses, if you can identify the business owner and the business manager is amazingly important. So you’ve got the business entity and you can look at that and go, it’s got 10 staff and it’s doing this and it’s exporting.

but the mindset and ambition, et of the business owner is very, important. So if you can find them, then there’s really, really proven methods from, I’ve particularly looked recently at the UK and the US that can show that you’ve kind of got all the ingredients, but you need a new recipe to put these things together. And that recipe is about, a lot of it is about peer to peer learning. So if you can find, just say an example, if you bring together a group of 10 to 12,

owner managers of companies that have got 10 staff, 20 staff, that sort of range. They’re not directly competitive. So you can bring them together in a particular structure where they facilitate an environment. They eventually share stories and tips with each other. And at Playus, I was just speaking to a guy in London a couple of nights ago. They’ve done this type approach with 2,000 businesses down in Brighton in South England. They’ve had very high level success.

So a lot of these companies, the business owners can get very focused naturally, and I’m one in a note, is you get focused in the day to day and that can take over. And sometimes you can forget the bigger picture of why did you start this business? What’s your personal objectives? How does that influence the business objectives? And then if you can start figuring out your growth ambitions, and a lot of that, and both that UK,

study which is called the vital 6%, 6 % of businesses creating over 50 % of jobs. Innovation was the core factor. So they’re more profitable businesses. The people in them are happier. So why not give that a go? So you’ve got to look for opportunities. But I reckon if you took a bunch of businesses over to Ambrose or Country Chef, this does happen. And a lot of people that would kind of open their eyes to things like innovation, doing things differently, different model, technology enabled.

And even these days use of AI is obviously coming in. So I think if you can get like what my ambition would be on some like the Sunshine Coast is to get, you know, some like 500 plus of those businesses going through a wealth structure type of process where they’re effectively teaching themselves and sharing ideas themselves. And as we all know, like being a business owner manager can be a pretty, it’s a tough job, can be a lonely job. And if you’ve got the right environment where you can actually

learn from each other and learn from some, like I sometimes just call them like lighthouse companies. in any region, you’ve probably got 20, 30 companies just great at something. Well, why not shine the light on those companies and actually bring business owner managers into them to take a look and not have like some consultant or academic talk to them, but have real life successful business people going, here’s our story, here’s what worked well, here’s what didn’t work. And really learn from those type of lessons. So we need, I think we need more focus on those sort of.

second stage type of companies. The other elements in the mix are important, but those second stage type of companies are the most important. So I think you’ve identified something there that raises some questions though as well, right? Because when you think about just the nature of startup companies in any region, that they’re hungry for advice, support, immersing themselves in something that’s going to help them get that kickstart and grow, right?

And then when you think about those larger scale enterprise companies that may be looking to hunt to the region, there’s other priorities there and maybe setting up a new office in a different region is not a key priority anyway. It’s just another part of their machine. So again, they’re probably not looking at really embedding themselves into a region and adding value to other businesses in the region. They’re probably just…

you know, are kind of here to just survive and do what they can. But then you’ve got that middle section of business that you see as that vital section as well, who are just busy, I think, on the day to day on doing what they do and continuing to do what they do. So what do you think is the ingredient to, or the missing ingredient to getting those businesses to look outside of their own four walls of their business and into the bigger value of the

Great question. Great question. there’s a, and it’s good question. And partly because like in the last, you know, 10 years, I’ve worked with a whole bunch of businesses through like all small businesses, established businesses, not startups, but established through like an innovation course. you you ask them, what’s your biggest barriers to actually making some of this stuff happen. And it’s like time. It’s the number one thing. So how do you do it? Well, the way you do it is you’ve got to have the right delivery vehicle and it’s got to be very practical.

And it’s got to focus. So you’ve got to have, I think, a peer based element is amazingly important. Any presenters have got to be ultra credible. And particularly you draw on presenters who are in business today who were leadable. there may be only, you know, if you’re running a 10 person company, speaking to somebody running a 10,000 person company is probably not that relevant, but speak to somebody who’s running somebody that’s 20 or 30 and will tell you how they got there and the issues along the way.

is valuable. it’s about the right, so it has to be very practical. It’s got to be time sensitive. So a lot of times you, you you don’t do, you know, three days at a time. might do, you know, a couple of hours, one or one evening, a week or a fortnight, that sort of thing. It’s got to be professional. You’ve got to respect people’s time. So I think you’ve got to look at those things. So for example, over in Colorado, that Chris told me is initially he was working with the city council during this.

And initially when they went to businesses talking about it, a lot of businesses said, no, go away. As city council, you’re not credible. You’re not credible because you’re an up and coming dynamic company and your perception is somebody from council is trying to tell you what to do. So the thing is you don’t do that. The examples I would give of good success here in the coast, there’s maybe three that come to mind instantly. One is the Prydgeon Digital Hub, which I think is absolutely outstanding. I’m a big fan of it.

But then to couple of industry groups, which you’ll know manufacturing excellence forum and then food and agribusiness network. So the two industry groups, you could put them together because they’ve got very good people running them. People are really committed to it. They’re on a bit of a cause and a mission. Their background is relevant to the businesses. know, take Tim with the manufacturer excellence. He’s got that aerospace type of background. He’s made fighter jets and

America or wherever, you so got a very credible background and he cares about these businesses He gives a shit basically which is kind of important. So those type of groups are very important and I think you know things like government Is part of the mix but I think government has got a you know, if I rule the world sort of thing Government would which which they are doing would support people like manufacturing excellence would support people like food and agribusiness Progen hub, which is a new so console initiative, but then

set them free, let them do the stuff, let them get really good people to run them because they’re always going to be very lightly staffed. And then very much listen to your, you’ve got to regard all these companies as clients. So listen to your client companies and what are your issues? What’s important to you? How can we help? The missing link sometimes is I would like to also have a, in business I’ve always had, you know, back in

Dulux days, you spend your $2 million and what effect did it have? So you’re measuring things like awareness levels or opinions and attitudes towards a brand. So I would like to have more quantitative evaluation of these types of things that really drive home. But in many cases, think we’ve got this sort of that group you call like the missing middle. And of course, you’ve got some industry groups. But beyond those two, I think they’re the leading lights in the coast. There will be others, but they’re the leading lights.

I also think you could probably do with another group which is looking at how do we support these second-stage growth businesses, sometimes working with these other groups, no doubt. But focusing on the coast, we’ve got something like our vital 6 % is probably about 2,000 companies. And this work I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been up to my eyes in spreadsheets with Troy as a data scientist working on it.

And we know there’s about 37,000 or so companies just in the Sunshine Coast Council area. But when you really get down to it, there’s maybe about, you could argue the number, maybe it’s between 1,000 and 2,000 who’ve got the most potential to grow. And that doesn’t mean the others don’t count. They do. But it means these ones are a particular priority. So you’ve got to also work. And I think they’re being, I honestly do think they’re being neglected at the extent of let’s attract big companies, which yes, is part of it.

support startups, yeah, that’s part of it. But what about this big chunk in the middle who’s on your doorstep and with a few of the right ingredients. And the other thing I just mentioned is role models. So I saw when I was in Scotland with my own business, there was an amazing group there called Connect, which came out of Connect in San Diego and it’s a really good, which is still running as well, which says something. And what they did is they just…

took really prominent successful entrepreneurs and they give them a chance to tell their story. And you could not help going to those things, going bloody hell. That person is damned impressive. And one, there’s a motivating factor for you to go, maybe I could do that. And there’s also a learning about, look, here’s what they did. And you go to, you know, three or four of those type of very credible.

people speaking, you’re going to pick up a lot and you’re going to meet some other people. And I think that’s another issue on places like the coast where you might go to a business event and you think this is just not my tribe. This is not my people. So it might be fine for these folks, but it’s not for me. And so I think a lot of these mid-stage companies, again, are getting a bit lost and they’re not getting the benefit of networking and support from their peers that they could get.

Thank you for that. leads me to two questions, right? I think the first one is you talk about that missing middle. And we also talked before around how that middle stage of company is often just busy, you know, nose to the grindstone, kind of looking inward rather than outward. I think there’s a challenge there. So the first question is how do we as a region identify that missing middle or that vital 6 % here on the coast?

maybe need to be tapped into in some way. And then the second thing is whose responsibility is that? Because is it up to council? Is it up to chambers of commerce, local government, state government? Or is it up to the businesses themselves like Fan and Manufacturing Excellence Forum have done to come together and do something together? Like whose responsibility? There’s a few good questions in there. So first of all, how do you identify them is actually

It’s time consuming and there’s a lot of data involved, but it’s eminently possible. And the reason it’s possible is because we’re not the first people in the world to do this. There’s lots of people in the world who’ve done this, like the UK, Vital 6%, Colorado, et cetera, ProfitNet, Donna Brighton. And lots of just well-documented. In the Colorado case, it was evaluated by Harvard Business School. So you’ve got some credible evidence that this type of approach works.

So from those types of approaches of other people, know that typically speaking, you look at the business side and you look at the business manager side. So the business side, it’s typically a company that’s the headline figures over 10, but it can in an area like this, anywhere, maybe over about six, seven might be worth a very good look at. Staff numbers. Yeah, staff numbers. absolutely. So staff numbers, you know, at a particular turnover level you can look at. You’re also trying to find companies that are

exporting outside this region, which is again very important in terms of bringing in your money. You’re trying to find companies that doing something a little bit innovative. But even at some of the parameters of size, just even take the size of company, with a project I’ve been doing for Sunshine Coast Regional Jobs Committee, which is from the Queensland Government and Council and some local business leaders, which is a really very good group, we have brought together about seven.

data sets into one and we can identify who these first level who these businesses are. We can probably find the one to 2000, we can find them. So that’s one thing, they identify as stage one with about four stages though. They identify as time consuming, but fairly easy. The other side of that is you have to look at the business manager themselves. So in Colorado, they actually got down to

close to psychometric testing. They ran like a little online, you know, it’s fairly easy to do. You can run a little online sort of survey, but you’re trying to find out is this person got a growth? Do they want to grow their business? Yes, no. What’s the scale of their ambition? Are they open to help? You know, those types of things. could, so they’ve actually ran for many years, like a little online, almost psychometric survey to try to identify the people. And over in the UK, they’ve done a similar type of thing. They more just,

an online survey, it’s not too fancy, but it’s all you’re trying to do is find is this person open? Do they want to grow the business? That’s about it. Would they put in a bit of time? Would they put in maybe 20 hours in a year to go through something like this, some sort of program? So it’s only possible to identify the businesses. You’ve got to do some mechanisms check and then who’s responsible? Well, I think it needs to be a bit of a mixture of business and support from government.

But building on my earlier thoughts, think government have to be supportive and not too much in the way because they need a credible group. Manufacturing Accidents Forum is credible with their group of client companies, et cetera. So you need a credible business-like group to be able to run it. And it’s got to be very, very professional. And I think in other countries, what’s happened is they’ve run one or two sort of pilot groups with 10, 20 companies. And they go through it and they

get great feedback, what’s good, what could be better. And they publish results at the end of it, what’s been the increase in sales and profit of this company over this time. The owners get direct feedback about how important the program was helping them improve that profit, et cetera. So that’s been the approach. You can run it a couple of times and then see if you can get more significant backing. Because if you’re going to do it well, you’ve got to do it with

you know, several hundred companies, I think in a region like this, can’t muck about. But if you can find those companies, which we can, and you can engage them, get some hard evidence of the impact of the program, then in the UK one in Brighton, which has run for 20 years, which is obviously usually a good sign because if it’s a bad program, it’ll get canned in two or three years or less. You know, they’ve had some like 2000 plus businesses through and they’ve got the associated data.

So I think if you get to that stage, you’ve run a couple of pilot programs that involves business and some support from government, then you’re off. But I also think, as I come back to your first questions, that this region needs to mature more. And part of that is needs the business leaders of businesses need to step up a bit more and government needs to step down a bit. Like I was so surprised when I came from the UK about how much government was everywhere.

know, ministers or mayors, et cetera, opening all these events. I’ve never seen that in the UK, not once. And I see it all the time here. So, you know, I think we need to, as we get a wee bit more mature and we get a bunch of slightly larger companies as well, you know, I think we can begin to take a bit more of our own responsibility, but we also need some backing which could come from government, but also particularly in the US, sometimes it comes from…

just more and also in Scotland. The example in Scotland I gave is there was something a little bit like this called the Entrepreneurial Exchange, where five or six of the absolute leading entrepreneurs in Scotland came together and they said, look, we’re not happy with how a lot of stuff is running in Scotland. We’re going to do something ourselves for these higher potential companies. And one of them who I met a few times, because he actually was a client of mine in the end of the business, was Tom.

I always hesitate because it’s Tom Hunter and Tom Farmer. They’re both billionaires. So you’ve got people like that. You’ve got a billionaire. He’s like a motor mechanic type of guy, the whole fleet of car repair stores that you sold to Ford for 1 billion. And then the other five or six leading entrepreneurs. So these leading entrepreneurs got together and said, we’re going to do something significant, hard-hitting, real, practical for these growth type of companies. And they had a small team of three, four people.

And then what they did is they engaged just leading entrepreneurs, professional service providers, investors, et cetera, as their almost like volunteer workforce. So three or four people coordinating 500 really cool entrepreneurs, tons of service providers and saying, okay, we’re to do a session on this, we’re going to do a session on this and getting really practical, good people to run them. So there’s other examples where

business leaders have stepped up on the coast, although we are immature in many ways, like not too far north of here, we’ve got three billionaires, tech billionaires who happen to live just in the Noosa area, that’s one of their places they live. So there are some people here. And so in the longer run, there might be some people as well as say, for the future of the coast and for our kids and grandkids, we need to step up and get a bit more professional about how we do this stuff, a bit more focused. So there’s possibilities there.

But at the best level, think we’ve got to start with building some of the models, like the industry groups have done good jobs and just take it kind of step by step, get some results. And then I think it would begin to take off by itself beyond that point. Yeah. Well, I’m interested to explore with you, Colin, and move maybe away from the theoretical or from looking outside at things that potentially have worked in other regions.

maybe moving from the theoretical to the hypothetical here, if you were to make wave a magic wand here on the Sunshine Coast and to establish or to have some sort of system that supports that hidden middle, like we talked about, what would that look like if you could do that and who would need to be activated to make that happen? the magic wand based on the fuel around the world would be

about four steps. one, identify these high potential companies. You put a few criteria like we talked about. You said that’s easy. That’s easy. That’s fairly easy. Yeah, I would get about 1000. Like maybe wouldn’t start with 1000. You might start with one or 200. But then, you know, over a few years, you’d head up to, you’ve to be ambitious. You know, I often ask, but what’s the scale of your ambition? So you’ve to be pretty ambitious. We’ve got at least two and a half thousand companies in that type of range. So you know, I think we’ve got to step up towards 1000. We’ve got to identify them, got to understand their needs.

which can be done via both online surveys, but also as part of this Sunshine Coast jobs project I’m working on at the moment, we’re going to go and physically meet about 10 leading companies across both some of the larger companies, two or three of the very large companies, three or four of these second stage growth companies, middle companies, and then two or three high potential startups. And I also got to judge the startups because

they’re important part of the mix, but these second stage middle companies are much more important in terms of everything, in terms of job creation and profitability, et cetera. They’re more important. So we’ve got to stage one, identify them, stage two, understand their needs very well, through face-to-face and some quantitative surveys. And then we’ve got to design and deliver some aspects of value. the way I think that can be done is through these sort peer-based learning. So we get little…

networks of 10, 12 people together. We get some really trained facilitators who are very practical business people and help run those groups through a very good process. I also think there is potential, like this one in the US, I’m trying to its name. I can’t remember its name, but there’s a foundation in the US. It’s quite a funny one because the guy who invented cat litter, where your cat goes he’s away.

He made hundreds of millions of dollars and he gave some like 250 million of it to this fund. It’s called the Edward Lowe Foundation. I just remembered. So what they do is they take like a sort of they’ve built their own sort of retreat type of center and then they take business owners through again, a very, very high level practical focus type of program. They bring them together to build those social networks because again, it can be lonely being a business owner manager. But if you go away somewhere like that and you’ve got a

you know, a blow your mind type of experience for a couple of days where you’re meeting other really cool business people. And many of those will become friends and business confidence really that you’ll be able to talk to. I could see that sort of thing in the longer run, but some of the elements coming out that we’d have to think about and work on. One is that is, you know, at start point isn’t really engaging people with their overall personal and business strategy where they’re going.

I think the second part is about innovation for established companies. What can they do? And it’s not just new products. It’s a lot of different things. And then also, I think you would probably have to take a good look at technology-enabled businesses. So I think you probably have a few common themes you’re working on. of course, all depends. We’re talking about shortly speaking to a bunch of businesses on the coast, as I mentioned. And it’s going to depend what they’re saying. What are their

So I think if you’re doing the magic wand, you’ve to think pretty big. And also if you’re going slightly even more ambitious, I genuinely think as well that the Sunshine Coast, given its predominance of these small growth companies, but also a good innovative mix coming in these days, good tech mix, environmental mix, creative mix coming in. I also think that you could actually, it could become a bit of an export industry so you could bring people in.

And I spoke to Chris up at the Pridgina Hub. You know, they hosted the Amazon Web Services, sort of major sort of sponsored conference by A and local government up there. And so they had people for a few days. I think you could actually run something like this that you attracted lots of other people in as well for sort of like business, probably called like business tourism, I guess. But you’ve got to start with who we’ve got and I’ve get out and about a lot on the coast. We’ve got a lot of absolutely amazing people here. We’ve got a lot of people who grew up here.

And we’ve got a lot of people who’ve positively chosen to be here. They’ve looked at, and I’ve had this story several times of people that, you know, they’re often Aussie and then they’ve been away in the UK or US and then think, right, I’ve got a young family now. I want to come back to Australia. Where do I go? And they sort of set the triangulation point and they all end up here because it’s lifestyle, great place live, bring up kids close to Brisbane and its airport, et cetera. And also,

You know, although as I said, it’s quite a long way to go. It’s beginning to get a bit of a, not beginning, it’s had it for a while, but there’s a bit of a low to medium level buzz about the place in terms of innovation. So some people do see, you know, something like the submarine cable. You know, there’s three or four guys who relocated from Boulder, Colorado, partly because they saw that. And they just thought, you know, give me a sign, any sign, that’s a good sign of progress and investment in the region. So there will be people like that.

And think that’s just going to continue people who are positively choosing to be here. And there’s a lot of talent. I think maybe the last thing I’d say on that is that these days as well, think we’ve got to go beyond the sort of borders of Sunshine Coast. So Richard Florida is a really amazing writer. It talks about meta regions. So if you look at the Sunshine Coast, we’re really linked into Sydney, Melbourne, actually even London really well. And I think we could do a better job about like sort of hunting in packs sometimes about going to these places.

So I think we could do, I think we’ve got to think about people coming to set up businesses here are not just going to say, I’m going to hire like 50 software developers. That’s probably not going to even enter their thinking. They’re probably thinking I’ll have a good core team here and they’ll have a hybrid team in Sydney, Melbourne or Sri Lanka or wherever in the world. But if they can begin to think the coast is a cool place to do that. The funny thing is the other day, think two

Couple of days ago, I saw these LinkedIn or news article, AFR, FinReview, which was the AI company. I’m trying to remember their name, the hub, I can’t remember their name, but it’s an AI type of company for targeting advertising agencies and so on. Springboards. Springboards, that’s it. And some investor put up from Blackbirds, he put up, am so surprised, like imagine my surprise that the top, one of the top companies we’re investing in is from Noosa and not from Surrey Hills in Sydney.

I kind of go get over yourself, mate. It’s been happening for 20 years. But that’s why I kind of go, we’ve got this brand image issue, because the Sunshine Coast is a dominant brand image, has got lots of positives, but also can have negatives for business. It be regarded as not a serious place to be. But I think progressively, that’s going to change. And somebody coming here like Springboard’s been based here for a relatively short time, raising $5 million bucks initial investment.

That’s not a first. The very first company in the Innovation Center 23 years ago, Type 5, which still going, raised $5.5 million year one, 23 years ago. it’s not new. It’s just been a steady pattern. But again, I think we could do a better job. Let’s say we got these 500,000 middle growth companies. I think there’s also a job to do in extracting their success stories and fitting that into media, feeding it into social media. we need a invest Sunshine Coast.

do a good job in this in many ways, but I think we need to do it like times 10, times 20, but get these success stories out to various niche type of channels and so on. Excellent. Look, just in closing here, Colin, I’m interested for the business owner on the Sunshine Coast listening and probably being inspired somewhat by our conversation here today about the potential here for innovative businesses on the coast. Like what would you say for them? Like what would you say to them that they can…

they can do now or think about now that might drive this idea forward. Sure. So I think it’s really important to take a little bit of time. I got, I remember speaking to like a CEO of a company and they said they didn’t go into the, their office until about 10 because they spent the first couple of hours trying to think bigger, on their own with a notebook and a cafe about strategy. So, so take, try to find a little bit of time away from your day to day office or work setting and just think a little bit more about your personal.

goals and what you want to do, and then translate into that what can this business do for you. And an innovative business, if it’s done well, it’s going to deliver higher sales, higher profit for you. And also at end of the line, if you want to exit and sell that business in 10, 15 years, you’re going to get a much better return because it’s not just a business. if you’re motivated, and also a lot of people are motivated by, they just want to do something that makes an impact and worthwhile, particularly in areas like clean tech or health tech.

So they’re motivated by doing something good. And so you go, well, what can you do? And also, what can you do different in this business? So the things I begin to suggest is like one thing I suggest to people, did this with like a quarry, believe it not, but a face or coast, was to say, just take your type of industry and the word innovation and just start Googling it. quarry is an innovation or media company is an innovation, whatever.

And you’ll begin, after a while, he said that was a Google alert maybe, you’ll begin to see some really interesting examples, which might inspire you and give you some ideas about what you could do differently. The other thing I’d say is, I’ll just say one simple tool is there’s a tool called an innovation pyramid. And so the classic pyramid shape, it’s by a lady called Rosabeth Moscanter of Harvard, takes no prisoners, ultra smart, really, really good.

But it’s got this simple idea, and it’s just an innovation pyramid with about four layers. And the bottom layer is incremental change. And the absolute top level is the big, audacious, crazy type of ideas. And she recommends how you should split your time between those. Because I see some business owners who get the big, big idea, and they go hell for leather at it, but at the expense of their day-to-day business, shouldn’t really do that overall. But the funny thing is the incremental.

changes the little things you can do to your business can result in very significant benefits. And so I think, you know, take a look at a sort of pyramid, go, what’s the big things I can do? What’s the small things I can do? What’s the sort of in-between sort of projects I can do? And then the key to making those happen is you have to get a bit of time. So we talked about that earlier. So you have to get some time. Again, the simplest thing I think you can do, it is not simple because everybody is under pressure.

emails and phone calls and staff and customers, et cetera. But it can be as basic as finding about two hours of Fortnite and whether that’s after work or during work time and just getting out and begin to say, okay, I’ve got my innovation pyramid. I’ve got the lots of small things I can change. I’ve got some of the big things I can work on and then just begin to work those through. at the sort of middle level, which can have a lot of advantages as well. Like I see people come up with an idea.

And you go, okay, well, you got, can you tell us more about that? And they can’t because they’ve got no more than one line and you go, what about, you know, getting one piece of paper and going, this is the idea. These are the business benefits. These are the steps along the way that I’m going to take. And then just use your two hours of Fortnite to begin to work it through. So it’s not easy. It is absolutely not easy. Maybe a final tip is get a, get a buddy. So for example, in this project I’m working on now with jobs and coast.

I’m working with a guy I first met 20 odd years ago called Troy Sadoski, who was with Typify, the very first company in Innovation Center. Now, he’s a data scientist. He’s got a data scientist group in LinkedIn with 190,000 members. He knows what he’s doing with data. I’ve been meeting him initially in the Sunshine Coast every Wednesday at about three o’clock or something like that for a one hour Zoom call. He’s been on the coast. He’s currently in Bhutan near India, but I still have the call. still have the call.

One hour call, that regular call with somebody who you trust and has got some complimentary skills just moves the whole thing along because you do not want to go to that call and go, shit, I didn’t do anything this week. I’m going to look a bit embarrassed. So I think for a business owner, if you get a little bit of a, I would call it like an accountability buddy, maybe a bit of a friend or somebody in another business, know, it definitely can help because the day-to-day pressures are enormous. So you have to somehow

dig a of escape tunnel and figure out how are you going to get to more rewarding, more profitable business. I love it. Yeah. Very good. Colin Graham, Causeway Innovation. I do encourage anyone watching and listening to this episode to reach out to Colin. LinkedIn, is that one of the best places for you? That’s right. The wonders of LinkedIn. love it. Yeah. Excellent. So reach out. And particularly if what we’ve talked about today inspired you to maybe come on this mission and support in some way, I’m sure Colin would love to hear from you.

And if you’re in business or you’re in that hidden middle, if you identify as that, then take those actions that Colin shared there at the end as practical ways to move forward and be more innovative in business. And of course, find others around you and don’t just stay within your four walls. think that’s where we want to leave people today. And if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and you want to drive this mission forward, I want you to share this episode with someone else, someone else in business who you think would get value from this conversation today.

Thanks for joining me on the show, Colin. Thanks, Ben. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.