The importance of enterprise and being a ‘Smart State’
Ellume founder’s pandemic bet pays off as Biden orders 8m COVID kits
Jacob Greber, United States Correspondent, Financial Review
Ellume co-founder and the Biden administration’s pick to make 8.5 million almost-immediate home COVID-19 tests, Sean Parsons, has lamented Canberra’s lack of interest in his company’s technology and a dearth of US-style co-operation between industry, academia and the military.
“That interaction isn’t the same here in Australia,” Dr Parsons said in an interview on Tuesday hours after the White House announced a $US230 million ($302 million) Pentagon deal to buy Ellume’s smartphone-based diagnostic kits.
“It’s often how new technologies are supported in the early years by America and it feels like that’s not the case here,” the Brisbane-based chief executive said.
The Ellume deal made news on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) across the US, where businesses, consumers and governments are screaming out for technology-based solutions to the country’s raging pandemic, which claimed another 1864 lives on Monday and produced 113,000 new cases.
Read the full article in the Financial Review here – Ellume founder’s pandemic bet pays off as Biden orders 8m COVID kits
“My understanding of Peter’s philosophy is that by investing in science infrastructure – the smart state infrastructure – you’d foster the smart ideas or people with capacity and from that would come baby companies that would grow up to be world companies.
Dr sean parsons discussing how former premier peter beattie championed queensland’s smart state infrastructure.
“It’s fair to say without that kind of investment we wouldn’t have access to the kind of talent we have at Ellume. Peter was ahead of his time.”
Dr sean parsons
On Thursday 24th September, the UWA Fogarty Scholars’ were a part of an exclusive Enterprise Panel. Bonnie Lin, Director of B2 Rainmakers and Fogarty Foundation Trustee was a terrific moderator with the panel of Dr Marcus Tan, Founder and CEO of Health Engine; Andrew Larsen a venture capitalist and Director of Larsen Ventures and Jasmin Ward Program Manager of LaunchPad and co-founder of start-up, Cribber plus several others.
The purpose was to encourage Scholars to have an Enterprising mindset; that is ways of thinking which sees opportunities rather than barriers, that sees learnings rather than failure, and wants to do something that creates change and develops solutions, rather than be complacent about the problems.
Some key message from the panel:
– Entrepreneurship is hard! You need resilience.
– It’s more than ok to ‘flearn’ (learning from failures). You will learn and grow more from knowing what not to do, than getting it right first time.
– Be passionate about the problems you want to solve!
– Having expertise in your field, eg medicine, law, business, will allow you understand the problems and identify solutions and have networks in your area of interest
We are fortunate that Mark Shelton shared his thoughts all the way from USA. Mark’s has shared his video for you all to watch. https://www.loom.com/share/7d0b134f362c4150ab51eb1e70134871
It was great to connect those there with these four, enterprising minded leaders. The informal conversations and relationships established are so powerful on your journeys.