Across 45 days of site visits in Europe and Scandinavia, one feature stood out in every productive innovation ecosystem: industry, universities and government work together as a matter of habit. In Australia the three pillars run in parallel, rarely meeting and often wary of one another. This Insight asks whether that Triple Helix deficit helps explain why business R&D stays so low, why global research-intensive firms anchor their advanced work elsewhere, and what a remedy mi

Innovation ecosystems often contain the same institutions but produce very different outcomes. This Insight argues that the difference lies in “rate-limiting complements” such as trust, talent density, patient capital, governance capability, and access to markets. Identifying which complement is binding at a given stage may explain why many innovation policies underperform.