Modern innovation ecosystems often fail, not from a lack of talent, but from a failure of collaboration. The key institutional pillars—university, industry, and government—operate in parallel rather than converging. They are driven by fundamentally different missions: eminence, profit, and probity. Genuine collaboration requires a clear-eyed understanding and respect for these core institutional drivers. We must build the bridge from simple transactions to deep, integrated p

Australian universities are public institutions, not businesses, yet they mix public purpose with commercial activity. This Insight examines how universities compete for students, manage related entities, invest in property and markets, and why transparent reporting must distinguish charitable and commercial operations to maintain public trust and financial clarity.

Australian universities have transformed from public institutions into corporate enterprises through commercial accounting standards. With $40 billion in combined revenue and $110 billion in assets, they now prioritise financial metrics over academic mission. This shift compromises traditional roles of knowledge creation, critical inquiry and community engagement, forcing institutions to treat education as a business rather than a public good.

Since 1963, Australia’s federal industry portfolio has been restructured more than 20 times. This extraordinary level of administrative churn exposes a deeper crisis: a persistent uncertainty about the purpose, priorities, and pathways of industrial policy. This Innovation Insight calls for a reevaluation of institutional maturity—one that strikes a balance between executive flexibility and enduring strategic direction.

The transformation of public administration from a domain grounded in public management to one dominated by political analysis represents a fundamental epistemological and institutional shift in the theory and practice of governance. The path forward is to reconcile its tensions, revisiting the lost arts of administration while embracing the political realities of contemporary governance. Doing so will allow public policy to once again be both effective and legitimate.