Stephen Withers
Thursday, 25 September 2008 11:10
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
Clausen's keeping his job as CEO of PC Tools - which will run as a Symantec subsidiary rather than being integrated into the business has happened with other acquisitions by the company - so I doubt he'll have time to launch a fresh IT startup.
I'm not criticising the individuals concerned. If I were in their shoes, I'd want to diversify my new-found wealth as much as possible. But I'm not sure if it does the country much good.
There's a lot of lip-service being paid to the importance of the ICT industry to Australia's economic future, but if practically every company falls into foreign ownership before it reaches the critical mass needed to be a genuine world player, where does that leave us?
Last weekend, David Skellern, the CEO of NICTA (Australia's national centre of excellence for ICT research) spoke to a group of journalists about the importance of innovation and the transformation of ideas into reality.
Skellern referred to the "valley of death" between universities and the market where the fruits of promising research often languish.
It's all very well for NICTA to have goals for 2020 that include becoming one of the world's top ten ICT research institutes, spinning out two companies per year, and seeing early spinouts reaching multinational status - but what good is that if the companies and their intellectual property are owned by overseas interests?
When I asked Skellern what we need to do to keep promising companies from moving offshore or falling into foreign ownership, he didn't seem to have an answer or even accept that it is a problem.
Read why I think this is a problem on
page three, then perhaps share your opinion with a comment in our forum.
