Governments would be better off encouraging local manufacturers and businesses to work together than offering financial carrots to attract big name companies.

Speaking in Adelaide at the start of a national seminar series, international expert on regional development and incubator management, Alistair Nolan says strength and success in regional development around the world relies on the right kind of government or public sector support.

Nolan says studies looking at hallmark regional success stories such as Silicon Valley in the US or Sophia Antipolis in France, show that clusters of enterprise thrive and innovation and development is enhanced when given the right kind of support.

A Masters graduate from Cambridge, Nolan is a member of the Local Economic and Employment Development Program team with the OECD in Paris.

Nolan is the keynote speaker at the Manufacturing Prosperity Conference hosted in Adelaide this week by the City of Playford and supported by Smartlink, the Department of Industry and Trade, The Business Centre, the SA Centre for Manufacturing, and Clusters Asia Pacific Inc.

“The best thing governments and the public sector can do to enhance innovation and help incubate new businesses is to provide top-flight support,” Nolan says.

“Governments need to develop quality analysis of the problems facing existing and emerging development clusters so that the supports they provide encourage networking and best practice. They also need to assess existing industries rather than attempting to artificially establish industry clusters.”

Nolan says the development of industry clusters has enormous benefits for business and the community by invigorating employment opportunities, developing an environment of ideas creation, harnessing the spirit of healthy competition balanced by industry cooperation and broadening expertise.

“Around the world there is an emerging interest in discovering the kinds of policies that enhance the development of successful industry clusters. Just recently the OECD policy recommendations from the first Ministerial Conference on Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) development were adopted by 47 Ministers and governments represented at the conference.

“There is a key role for the public sector in supporting development by providing local networks for industry that assist with finance, training, marketing distribution and product development.

“SME’s for there own part must embrace the enormous competitive advantages that collaboration can provide. The most dynamic economies are those in which networking and a tradition of cooperation across businesses has been developed.”

Nolan said Australian industries could learn from important cluster success stories internationally.

“Just in the past few weeks in Barcelona 10,000 SMEs organised as six local area networks worked together to negotiate improved pricing for electricity supplies,” he said. It is the relationships built up through supported networks that ensure this sort of block negotiation can happen and that benefits flow on to all member firms.

“And there are many more success stories from across Europe and the US where government provision of essential supports such as training, education, and quality assurance services are a foundation for the collective success of small enterprises with complementary needs and goals.”

Nolan was brought to Australia by the Smartlink program and will be in Adelaide this week to present his conference paper and meet with several groups including ITEK the UniSA business incubator, UniSA’s Hawke Institute, the Centre for Applied Economics and the Centre for the Development of Entrepreneurs. He will then present seminars and have discussions with groups in NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

Media contact: Michèle Nardelli (08) 8302 0966 or 041 8823673
email: michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au