Innovation and Technological Events in Australia

This article discusses the latest innovation and technological events in Australia, including Ci2017, AFR Innovation Summit, and Immersive Technology Hackathon for Disability Support. It also explores the impact of new technology on public transport service provision and the passenger experience. The events aim to encourage new startups to follow their own ideas and step up for the benefit of society. The article also highlights the potential risks of sharing ideas at public events and competitions.

Running head: INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA
Innovation and technological events in Australia
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Introduction:
Ci 2017 (creative innovation 2017) by, Gary or Liz Baldwin, Baldwin Consulting
Group was held on 13-15 November 2017, Melbourne, Australia. Ci2017
("Nationalpolicyseries.com.au", 2018), main motive and aim was to increase the awareness of
the advancement of robotics, artificial intelligence, healthcare, automation of jobs and vehicles,
workplaces and cities of the future and other major trends. The event was attended by many
directors, leaders and emerging talent from Australia’s and the world’s major organisations, State
and Federal Government departments, Universities and entrepreneurs across all sectors.
AFR Innovation Summit Sofitel Wentworth Australia 2030 by Prosperity through
innovation – Making it happen was held on 30-31 July 2018 (Summit, 2018). This summit deals
with the technology wave building in the world. The summit focuses on the factors that can help
to adapt and innovate for competing against the increasingly globalised market. Artificial
intelligence and automation are being blamed for the less demand of workers and decreasing of
wages in the workplace. Though the job market remains competitive, the shortage of technology
skilled workers threaten to disrupt the transformation of the world. The main focus of the summit
was to spread the awareness about the market and how technology is affecting the corporate
culture and corporate world. It mainly dealt with the statistics of the number of people who were
sufficiently skilled for the upcoming technology and it also suggested some recommendation for
the upliftment of the workers in the field of technology for job retention and employee
satisfaction.

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Immersive Technology Hackathon for Disability Support by, House with No Steps
was held on 29th November 2017 ("www.eventbrite.com.au", 2018). The Immersive Technology
Hackathon for Disability Support aimed to gather bright and motivated individuals who wanted
to develop impactful solutions for the disability sector of the country in highly collaborative and
innovative way. The main motive of the event was for a social cause. Handicapped and impaired
people need to be helped with proper support and technology. The participants included
engineering, media, design and art students who were interested in creating a social impact
through innovative and effective technology. The admission charge was free for the desired
participant students and food and drinks was free for the participants along with that, top 3
participant teams got $1000 cash prize and also a contract of $50,000 funding for making the
idea in reality.
Discussion:
The innovation summit and the hackathon events mainly focused on the new invention
and encouraging new startups to follow their own ideas and step up for the benefit of the
society. According to Porras (2018), it focused on the newer technologies gathering worldwide
attention which helps in solving traditional problems in the workplace and the society as well.
The summit helped the innovators by motivating them in bringing new ideas and concepts to
reality. The outrage of the artificial intelligence globally proves that those kinds of summit do
help in achieving success to new entrepreneurs. According to Nelson & Mulley (2013), these
events helped to identify the factor how Automation technologies and sustainable
development strategies should be focused on to be a successful entrepreneur. Those events not
only motivated the participants and the audience to take up the challenge of innovation helping
the society and the environment, they also did help in monetary funding and sponsoring the

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innovative ideas to make them a reality. For instance the hackathon event gave a prize money to
the team with unique yet effective ideas that would help the handicapped and impaired people of
the society. They also promised for funding in the later stages of the development of the
ideas into reality encouraging the team to focus on the innovation without worrying for the
source of funding. The event also helped the audiences in gaining appropriate knowledge of few
innovation and inventions that helped in changing the traditional technology used earlier. It also
gave suggestion to the enthusiastic people for successful entrepreneurship in different fields
(Chang, Fang & Li, 2016). Entrepreneurs gained a lot of knowledge and motivation of starting
something new, they learned how to cope up with risks and how risks and desire can shape up a
innovation to reality and also gain popularity. The events also helped in giving of suggestions
and knowledge about building successful teams to be able to work enthusiastically and overcame
the fear of failure.
These events help many people in terms of motivating and also helping the participants in
gaining funding and sponsors yet many events does have the tendency to steal or copy the ideas
of the innovators which cannot fall under the copyright law until the idea is labeled as patent or
successfully stored for the showcase as evidence. Many companies does this kind of public
events and competition in recognizing talents and ideas of enthusiastic people and copying them
to reality. For example the business idea of UBER cabs around the world was stolen by a
company based in India named OLA. UBER services provided primarily provided cab services
across the globe which was copied by the company OLA (Wallsten, 2015). OLA cabs copied the
business idea of launching the cab services in India, they also copied the marketing strategies and
operating strategies from the UBER Company and slowly started competing against them in the
Indian market and at present they are competing against each other globally (Surie & Koduganti,

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2016). The idea and business proposal do not have specified patent and therefore these events
can copy the ideas without getting penalized for that. According to Cusumano (2013), another
such example are the lawsuits filed by Samsung and Apple on each other prove that
companies do steal and copy the ideas of other companies and claim that to be their own idea.
Both the companies had put allegation on each other complaining about infringement of patents
held by the companies. For example Apple claimed that the “slide to unlock” feature was
exclusively held by Apple and Samsung had used them without their permission (Kim, Park &
Kim, (2015). Though Samsung fought back and denied any such allegation and doings by them,
the court ruled in the favor of Apple and Samsung had to pay $120million approx to their
rival company. Many such cases have been reported by other companies that their ideas and
patents have been copied or stolen by another company.
Conclusion:
Events and summits about technology possess great value and interest among the
entrepreneurs and the technology based companies. It helps to focus on newer inventions and
technologies for the increase in the profitability of the company and it also helps others securing
newer technology. Events like Ci2017, AFR Innovation Summit and Immersive Technology
Hackathon for Disability Support tried to help and reinforce the idea of helping the society and
the environment by applying sustainable development into newer inventions. They also focused
on the trending technologies like artificial intelligence and automation of machines which if
implemented to newer technologies and inventions can be successful in the current market.
These summits, events and competitions also help the participants and the audiences in
expressing their unique ideas and proposals to be considered by them for funding and

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sponsorship to be a reality. Many times these kinds of events and competitions can be dangerous
and unworthy to share the ideas as few of them can be copied and implemented in the form of
new inventions that can be used for profit by the company without acknowledging the origin of
ideas from the individual or team.

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References:
Chang, Y., Fang, Z., & Li, Y. (2016). Renewable energy policies in promoting financing and
investment among the East Asia Summit countries: Quantitative assessment and policy
implications. Energy Policy, 95, 427-436.
Cooper, A., Berg, A., Sclater, N., Dorey-Elias, T., & Kitto, K. (2017, March). LAK17
hackathon: getting the right information to the right people so they can take the right
action. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Learning Analytics & Knowledge
Conference (pp. 514-515). ACM.
Cusumano, M. A. (2013). The apple-samsung lawsuits. Communications of the ACM, 56(1), 28-
31.
Kim, S. Y., Park, S. T., & Kim, Y. K. (2015). Samsung-Apple patent war case analysis: focus on
the strategy to deal with patent litigation. Journal of Digital Convergence, 13(3), 117-
125.
Nationalpolicyseries.com.au. (2018). Retrieved from
https://www.nationalpolicyseries.com.au/afr-innovation-summit/
Nelson, J. D., & Mulley, C. (2013). The impact of the application of new technology on public
transport service provision and the passenger experience: A focus on implementation in
Australia. Research in Transportation Economics, 39(1), 300-308.

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Porras, J., Khakurel, J., Ikonen, J., Happonen, A., Knutas, A., Herala, A., & Drögehorn, O.
(2018). Hackathons in software engineering education–lessons learned from a decade of
events.
Summit, A. (2018). www.informa.com.au. Retrieved from
https://www.informa.com.au/event/conference/afr-innovation-summit/
Surie, A., & Koduganti, J. (2016). The emerging nature of work in platform economy companies
in Bengaluru, India: The case of Uber and Ola Cab drivers. E-Journal of International
and Comparative Labour Studies, 5(3).
Wallsten, S. (2015). The competitive effects of the sharing economy: how is Uber changing
taxis. Technology Policy Institute, 22.
www.eventbrite.com.au. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/immersive-
technology-hackathon-for-disability-support-tickets-40089005294#