Digital innovation can deliver $315 billion in gross economic value to Australia over the next decade, according to a new landmark report.

The Digital Innovation report, compiled by AlphaBeta Advisors and commissioned by CSIRO’s Data61, outlines the nation’s next billion dollar industries and strategic areas where Australia can succeed in creating data-driven industries.

While Australia has had economic growth for some time, the report shows the need to increase productivity and find new sources of export competitiveness to secure the economy’s future prosperity in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

“Every sector of the global economy has been re-defined as a result of digital science and technology and the extensive use of data,” Adrian Turner, CEO at CSIRO’s Data61, said.

“This next digital wave to revolutionise existing industries and create entirely new ones is ours to capture. But the opportunity is perishable if we don’t collectively take action now.

“Progressive data-driven organisations are investing in four core areas to realise value from data; data capture, management, analysis and taking action with it. Combining this data with domain expertise, in areas like healthcare, agriculture and mining, is where we can create an unfair advantage.”

Sustaining economic growth

AlphaBeta Director, Dr Andrew Charlton, said digital innovation has created enormous value globally and accounts for around 11 per cent of GDP in advanced economies, amounting to an annual value of $6 trillion. However, Australia has lagged our peers in capturing these benefits.

“Digital innovation is critical to improving our nation’s productivity and sustaining economic growth. It’s not just about creating the next Google or replicating Silicon Valley,” Dr Charlton said.

“Rather, almost half of economic benefit from digital innovation comes from the adoption of new technology across existing industries.”

Eight high-potential opportunities

Australia’s strongest opportunities are in focusing R&D investment and applying digital innovation to existing industry strengths where key drivers of competitiveness are already in place such as strong domestic markets and in high quality basic research.

The report identified eight high-potential opportunities for Australia in digital innovation, set to be worth $155 billion annually in the Asia-Pacific region over next decade: precision healthcare, digital agriculture, data-driven urban management, cyber-physical security, supply chain integrity, proactive government, legal informatics, and smart exploration and production.

Data61 has already begun tackling some of these high-potential opportunities, through the launch of a national digital challenges program, which is designed to facilitate stronger collaboration between research, government and industry on strategic and national data-driven challenges to accelerate large scale outcomes.

The initial challenge is focussed on food provenance and supply chain traceability with the NSW Department of Primary Industries as the first partner. The aim is to ensure product integrity and minimise food fraud specifically for cherries, rock lobsters, abalone and citrus.

Digital challenges program

Data61 is also partnering with a range of organisations across industry and government tackling broader food provenance and supply chain traceability issues as part of the national digital challenges program.

The issue was identified in the Digital Innovation report as a critical problem and threat to Australia’s economic growth and development with food fraud alone costing Australia $65 billion per year due to counterfeiting produce.

“Data61 is helping Australian organisations capture the opportunity of digital innovation by bringing the ecosystem of government, industry and academia together to create new value,” Mr Turner said.

“As part of Australia’s national science agency, we have access to proven domain expertise and combine it with Data61’s deep data science and engineering excellence to deliver digital innovations that are large scale and globally relevant.”

To download the Digital Innovation report visit: www.data61.csiro.au/digitalinnovationreport

For more information on the Challenge, visit: www.data61.csiro.au/challengeprogram