The Hon Andrew Leigh MP
Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury
Opinion Piece
The “lone genius” founder myth is dead; innovation works like elite sport
Published in SmartCompany
23 March 2026
The stereotypical story of innovation features a solitary genius, a garage and a lightning-bolt idea that changes everything. The narrative is neat and cinematic. Unfortunately, it also obscures how technological progress usually happens.
In reality, modern innovation looks more like elite sport. Success depends on a coordinated effort involving talent, coaching, facilities and fair rules. Countries that understand this tend to build deeper and more resilient technology sectors. Those that do not risk watching the global competition pull away.
Talent remains the starting point. In the digital economy, that talent takes the form of entrepreneurs, software engineers, designers and data specialists who transform concepts into products. Australia has produced firms that have shown what is possible. Atlassian and Canva illustrate that companies founded here can reach international scale. Their rise reflects technical skill, creative design and an appetite for tackling large markets.
The pool of digital expertise has grown markedly. Employment in occupations linked to ICT, software and database management has increased by more than 40 per cent over the past decade. Demand for AI-related skills has expanded rapidly as well. References to these capabilities in job advertisements have more than tripled in ten years.
Marketing professionals now use generative tools to refine campaigns. Engineers draw on machine learning to improve systems. Analysts routinely work with datasets of a scale that would once have seemed implausible. The digital economy rewards people who can connect technical understanding with practical judgement.
This shift has a simple implication. Skills policy sits at the heart of technology policy. The more widely digital capability is spread across the workforce, the stronger the nation’s capacity to innovate.
Behind the players stand the coaches. Universities and research organisations train graduates who later build companies or embed new capabilities within established firms. They generate knowledge that feeds into emerging industries. Public research funding helps sustain this intellectual momentum, enabling ideas to circulate between disciplines and across borders. Progress in innovation often emerges through persistent experimentation rather than a single decisive breakthrough. Small refinements accumulate. Techniques improve. Eventually the performance gains become visible.
In software teams, the process may involve a shared repository and a spirited exchange over whether a clever solution justifies the extra complexity. In economic terms, it reflects the steady accumulation of productivity-enhancing insight.
Innovation also requires the right training grounds. In a digital economy, these take the form of high-speed networks, cloud services and increasingly large data centres. Such facilities underpin the tools that businesses rely on each day. Artificial intelligence models demand vast computing power. Digital platforms host essential applications. Data infrastructure enables decisions to be made in real time.
Australia’s digital sector already contributes a significant share of national output. Investment in data centres and related equipment continues to expand as firms seek greater computing capacity. These developments carry an energy dimension. As digital workloads grow, so too does demand for reliable and cleaner power. Technology policy therefore intersects with the broader transformation of the energy system. The quality of the infrastructure can shape the pace of innovation as surely as the skill of the workforce.
Clear rules of play matter just as much. Technology markets often exhibit strong network effects. A platform that attracts more users gathers more data, improves its service and becomes harder to challenge. This dynamic can produce impressive innovation. It can also make entry more difficult for newcomers. Well-designed competition policy helps ensure that markets remain contestable. It gives emerging firms the confidence that superior ideas can still find an audience. Regulators face the task of applying familiar economic principles to unfamiliar sources of advantage such as control over data or access to digital ecosystems.
Strategic choices will also shape the sector’s trajectory. The defining question of the coming decade concerns how organisations deploy artificial intelligence and advanced computing tools. These technologies resemble earlier general-purpose innovations such as electricity. Their initial impact may appear modest. Larger gains often arrive once firms redesign workflows and invest in complementary capabilities.
Evidence is already emerging that AI can improve performance in areas such as software development and customer engagement. The largest benefits tend to arise when workers integrate new systems into their tasks rather than being displaced by them. Diffusion will be critical. Many small and medium-sized enterprises are beginning with narrow applications, then expanding as confidence grows. Productivity gains depend on this steady spread.
No competitive arena thrives without institutions that help coordinate activity. Industry bodies can facilitate the exchange of knowledge and promote standards that lower barriers to adoption. Government initiatives that support investment in critical technologies or assist firms experimenting with artificial intelligence can complement these efforts. Economists often distinguish between the creation of new ideas and their widespread use. The economic payoff depends heavily on the latter.
Australia approaches this period of technological change with considerable strengths. We have capable entrepreneurs, respected research institutions and expanding digital infrastructure. The central task is to ensure that these elements work together so that ideas move more quickly from laboratories to start-ups and from start-ups to international markets.
The rewards extend beyond the technology sector itself. Stronger innovation performance lifts productivity and raises living standards. Digital tools reshape services in fields such as healthcare, finance and education. New firms generate employment and export opportunities in an increasingly competitive global economy.
The romantic image of the lone innovator will probably endure. Yet the reality is more collective and more demanding. Building a successful technology sector resembles fielding a high-performing team. Execution, coordination and sustained investment matter more than mythology. Nations that grasp this are more likely to influence the direction of the innovation race rather than simply trying to keep up.
Andrew Leigh is the Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury.
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