As Queensland’s largest digital innovation festival Something Digital nears, a call is being made for the Sunshine State to enhance its digital innovation capabilities.
This comes in the wake of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) releasing new data on the state of innovation across the country and notably, Queensland is tied for second place with Victoria, with 47% of its businesses being innovation active.
Something Digital co-founder Nadine Zrinzo said despite Queensland’s high ranking in innovation, we’re lagging behind digitally.
“While it’s great to see such exciting numbers for innovation overall, Queensland is ranked as the sixth state in Cisco’s latest digital readiness report2, in front of only Tasmania and the Northern Territory,” Ms Zrinzo said.
“We’re clearly not behind in innovation as a whole, but there’s a lack of focus on digital innovation,” Ms Zrinzo said.
Ms Zrinzo said that while innovation and digital innovation are intrinsically linked, it seems Queensland businesses are behind on leveraging digital tools and platforms such as AI, machine learning, and data-driven decisions to drive transformation.
“Queensland is really posited for digital growth and has so much potential, we just need all the industries to put digital solutions at the forefront,” she said.
The same ABS study shared that innovating Queensland businesses had the highest percentage (55%) of any state or territory for rating digitalisation factors as being important to business’s innovative activity.
Key factors (30 June 2021 to 30 June 2023) included: knowledge of digital activities (38.5%), investment in digital technologies (23.1%), access to digital skills (26%), digital capability building (19%), digital business strategy (14.6%), and digital culture (16.1%).
“These statistics show that businesses in Queensland are aware of the importance of digitalisation factors to innovation, and we need to make sure this is reflected across the state and Australia in general,” Ms Zrinzo said. Ms Zrinzo said that although Something Digital is hosted in Brisbane, the festival caters to the digital innovation needs of not only Queensland, but Australia as a whole.
“The roster of speakers and experts we have in our lineup are from interstate and around the globe, bringing together diverse perspectives and cutting-edge insights.” she said.
Something Digital will feature speakers from Meta, Doctors without Borders, Bluey, NASA, CSIRO, Flight Centre, ABC, Seek, BHP, covering everything from AI, digital skills for future-proofing careers, governance of new technologies, and capitalising on customer-experience led growth.
“We’re aiming to strengthen our nation’s economy by building digital capabilities across industries, and we encourage all businesses and professionals to get involved,” Ms Zrinzo said.
For more information and to book tickets, visit Something Digital.
Key Dates:
Something Digital is held across multiple stages within Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley precinct. Key dates for the 2024 Festival are:
● August 26 – Something Fest begins
● August 27 to August 28 – Something Digital Conference
● August 29 – The Something School Breakfast
● August 30 – Something Fest concludes
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