Case Studies/Tech Translate Australia [1998 - Ongoing]
Tech Translate Australia
Building a national industrial capability to strengthen Australia’s ‘missing middle’ SMEs - informed by nearly three decades of Australia–Germany deep-tech and Fraunhofer experience.
A national network of placed based industrial ecosystems operating at scale
Place-based technology-translation ecosystems connecting regional capability with national and international markets. Thereby, ensuring ongoing value capture that builds and sustains regions and industries of high-complexity.
1998 → Today
Tech Translate Australia grew from nearly three decades of first-hand experience across the Australian and German innovation systems, beginning with VPIphotonics and Fraunhofer HHI in 1998. Combining those international relationships with Australian regional innovation expertise and triple-helix partnerships created the foundation for today’s national initiative.
Three decades
Practical lived experience across Australia, Europe (Germany) and US in deep technology, applied research, industry, universities and start-ups.
Australian creativity x German engineering >> Develop - Deploy - Comercialise
Combining deep engineering, applied research and industrialisation with design engineering, creativity, adaptability and entrepreneurship.
Why Tech Translate Australia?
Australia produces world-class research, technologies and ideas, yet too much capability struggles to cross the gap between research and industrial scale.
Tech Translate Australia is being developed to strengthen that missing middle - connecting applied research, engineering capability and innovative SMEs to create globally competitive products, companies and industries.
The proposition is simple:
Combine Germany's strengths in deep engineering, applied research and industrialisation with Australia's strengths in design engineering, creativity, adaptability and new ideas - and build the structures that allow those strengths to translate technology into industry.
Three decades journey between Australia and Germany
Living and working in Germany, collaborating with multiple Fraunhofer institutes, and building deep-tech ventures across Australia and internationally gave me first-hand insight into the strengths and gaps of both innovation systems. That cumulative experience enabled me to recognise Australia’s technology-translation challenge and bring together the capabilities needed to pilot an optimised Australian–German model.
Learning From Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern showed me how a region facing major industrial decline could reinvent itself through a coordinated ecosystem of Fraunhofer applied research, universities, industry and government, generating more than 15,000 high-value technology jobs. It became the blueprint to adapt for regional Victoria and Australia — which led us to Bendigo and the beginning of the Bendigo Fraunhofer Initiative.
Bendigo: From pilot to proof point
I brought industry, government and academia together to adapt the Kaiserslautern model for Bendigo, creating a pilot that ultimately secured $3 million in funding and ministerial support. Its success generated interstate and national interest, leading to a broader stakeholder network and collaboration with Australia's leading innovation-policy experts.
From Regional Pilot to National Platform
The Bendigo experience proved the potential of an optimised Australian–German technology-translation model. Together with Dr John H. Howard, I then helped develop the national case for Tech Translate Australia — a proposed network focused on closing Australia’s missing-middle SME gap and scaling place-based industrial transformation across the country. The current proposal envisages a ten-year national rollout. Read the article here below.
My Fraunhofer Journey
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Merger of Australian Photonics CRC start-up at the ANU and Melbourne University with a spin-out BNED GmbH in Berlin, forming VPIphotonics and VPI Systems.
First-hand experience gained in establishing a global tech SaaS company.
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Formerly known as Industrial Communications, Munich.
While working as Group Leader at BMW Research and Innovation Headquarters in Munich, I worked with Fraunhofer IKS to develop next-generation telematic devices for the automotive market.
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Whilst at La Trobe University, I established collaborations with IESE to replicate the successful digital transformational journey of Kaiserslautern for the Greater Bendigo Region.
$3m AUD was secured to work with IESE to bring the Fraunhofer model to regional Australia. This was where the optimal Australian-German innovation program for deep tech and change management was developed and forms the basis of the operating model of ‘Tech Translate Australia’.
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Whilst at La Trobe University, I established collaborations and placed several students to undertake internships with Fraunhofer IPA.
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As part of the Fraunhofer, Australian initiative collaborations were established between the Factory of the Future at Swinburne Univeristy of Technology and IAO and IESE.
I have placed students on internships at IAO.
Existing Fraunhofer activities in Australia East Coast
Founded in 2015, through the collaboration of LTU-ANU-Fraunhofer IESE, the stakeholder group has grown to cover the East Coast of Australia.
$3m AUD was secured to establish an Advanced manufacturing Institute for Industrie 4.0 in the Greater Bendigo Region.
Cumulative outcome is a hybrid German (Fraunhofer IESE ) and Australian (Regional Innovation Management) expert body of knowledge existing in the Triggering Innovation Leadership Transformation (TILT) program
National network (hubs [metro] and spokes [regions])
What This Journey Demonstrates.
This journey captures how I work. I identify opportunities others may not yet see, assemble complementary world-class capability, build trust across industry, government and academia, adapt international best practice to Australian conditions, secure commitment and resources, and turn an initial idea into a platform capable of scaling from regional pilot to national initiative.
IDENTIFY → ASSEMBLE → ALIGN → DELIVER → SCALE