By   August 19, 2020

Atlassian is Australia’s biggest innovation export. The $6 billion publicly-traded software application business developed popular partnership tools like Hipchat and Confluence. Software engineers tend to love the Atlassian products as much as they love using Kafka monitoring tools such as Operatr. Today, the business held its very first European Summit in Barcelona , showcasing various corporate speakers from the company, where it exposed how its software application market has exceeded $250 million in sales and that a brand-new information centre will be established in Ireland to serve European cloud clients.

Despite of the massive wins since the business began some 15 years back, co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar stay modest about their success and continue to promote for the assistance and advancement of Australia’s tech scene. Business Insider briefly consulted with Farquhar at the summit about the existing state of the innovation market and exactly what he hopes it will attain in the coming years.

Farquhar thinks it’s interesting to see how federal government has understood how tech is altering workforce mobility solutions and the way individuals work. “For a very long time they didn’t pay any attention. I sit on the innovation board of Australia, and the only thing I do is try and help Australia to be more ingenious and embrace innovations and make Australia be the very first on the planet at something”.

“The greatest difficulty we have in Australia in regards to innovation is that the majority of people in Australia have actually led a really comfortable, protected life, meaning innovation is frightening since it is related to change. Change can bring remarkable, brand-new things, but it can also be frightening”. He went on to say, as soon as Google starts producing self-driving cars and trucks and a corresponding software tester with ict risk mitigation, and we purchase a great deal of those cars and trucks, then the cash is going to Google instead of Australia.

Farquhar thinks we have currently lost the cars and truck market, so that’s a bad example but exactly what are the markets we are going to be the very first worldwide at? Mike had an excellent example which is that we do about 1% of the world’s GDP in Australia, so we’re just producing 1% of the world’s innovation and software application to stay competitive. So that’s why I sit on federal government boards, to obtain direct exposure to the administration and be a voice for business leaders. Typically speaking, they are all attempting to do the right thing, it’s simply tough relocating products and individuals in federal government.

“The something we can do is commemorate the wins more and reveal the daily punter, exactly what does this mean for them? The example I would not use is Atlassian, or anything like that. I’d say let’s demonstrate how innovation is used in other organisations.” He used the example of Peter Murphy, a teacher from the University of South Australia, who developed the world’s very first plastic vehicle rear view mirror embedded with a GPS fleet and asset tracking system. Since June 2016 the development had an overall export sales worth of around US$162 million.

“I think they saw the writing on the wall earlier than everybody else,” he stated. “They can deliver them overseas, they can fit thousands in a container ship, so now we have this Australian business – which might have been bought out by now – this effective Australian business that provides rear vision mirrors to the world. “I believe that story is more attractive to the daily individual than some software application business.

“We have to alter the manner in which individuals think of innovation in Australia. The tough one is that if we do not maintain this, we get left behind.” Regarding his participation with the innovation board, in which the federal spending plan was simply around the corner, Business Insider also inquired about his thoughts on the federal government’s existing financing of the market and exactly what he hopes will be dealt with in the federal government’s financial evaluation.

He was pleased to see increased financial investment in public education, referencing Gonski, stating that having actually originated from a public education background, he thinks “it’s extremely crucial and I’m passionate about it.” But he also expects increased financial investment in innovation, agile test management services and tech. “I (hope) for more momentum in the discussion around innovation,” he stated. “We have to influence the Australian individuals around our market and its potential to alter the world.”.