Wayne Gerard told a business forum in Brisbane that investment in Queensland’s human capital was crucial to the state’s ongoing economic prosperity.

He said local innovators need partnerships with the business sector to thrive but had to wait until the “last minute” to make connections with the corporate sector.

“Human capital is our competitive advantage, it’s our differentiator,” he told the Queensland Futures Institute forum.

“When I think about what is going on in Queensland right now with the initiatives that are happening in renewable energy, rare minerals, climate change – there are so many amazing things but how do we become our first customers?”

Project leader at Mater Research Professor Josephine Forbes.

Gerard said the challenge for local corporations is to find a way to partner with local entrepreneurs or innovators to find solutions to background or niggling problems in the business.

“That also builds economy and capability. Unless we work together to do that we just won’t get there fast enough,” he said.

“We’ve got to move from being a single dimension organisations focussed predominantly on profit to organisations that also understand our really serious responsibility to help build our economy and help to build a sustainable supply chain.”

Another member of the panel at the QFI panel, project leader at Mater Research Professor Josephine Forbes, said enhancing Queensland’s manufacturing capability could help fix supply chain problems in the health sector.

The panel agreed Australia had no issue with the research side of R&D but struggled with the development side.

While Australia spent 1.6 per cent of GDP on research and development, China’s spending was at 2.4 per cent of its GDP.

“We have so much great research happening at universities. We have a problem with how to partner those researchers with customers to commercialise that research,” Gerard said.