Newer businesses, particularly those with university research origins, shine in 2025’s innovators’ list

Below is the introduction speech from @AuManufacturing’s Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers awards event, held on May 7. You can view the 2025 list here. 

Welcome to the awards for Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers, something @AuManufacturing has the great privilege of hosting for the third year running.

I’d like to begin by respectfully acknowledging the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are holding this event.

As with the previous two iterations of this campaign, let’s get underway with a few quick reflections on what we saw this time around, then it’s over to our esteemed keynote address.

After launching this campaign last November, we have seen some remarkable companies put themselves forward. We’ve made an effort as always to stress that innovation is for absolutely every manufacturer wanting to stay relevant, regardless of anything else.

We’ve received a higher representation of startup companies this time around versus previous years, which is perfectly fine. Companies formed to commercialise research out of Australian universities performed especially well in 2025, making up what looks like four of the top ten.

It’s an encouraging thing to see, particularly with the regular reminders that Australia needs to do better in converting public research into commercial results.

I will just note that while there is a heap of established companies in this year’s Top 50, I also appreciate that they don’t always feel the same urgency as startups to tell news outlets and investors and various awards programs about their story.

For narrative’s sake, let’s look at the Top 10 Gold Award winners this time around and see if there are any patterns in the noise. 

Last year, one company among the top 10 was established in the 1960s, three in the 1980s, one in the 2000s, four in the 2010s and one in the 2020s. The median spend on R&D was about 15 per cent of revenues.

In 2025, things are quite different. There was one company with a history going back to the 1990s, another the 2000s, three in the 2010s, and four that got started this decade. Characteristic for a collection of such youthful companies, the median R&D spend was very high – at 65 per cent of revenues.

Novelty, an important part but only one part of innovation, featured prominently. Nearly all of the top ten self-described in terms like being able to “achieve what no-one else could”, “world-first”, “pioneering”, being or aspiring to be a global leader, or simply being “a leader”.  

High R&D spends can be essential at a pre-commercial stage, and leadership achievements or ambitions are admirable things, but none alone guarantee that a company is an innovator. 

Nor is simply saying you’re an innovator.

We always get quite a few nominations asserting that a company is innovative or founded on innovation or even has innovation as part of its proverbial fabric. It’s always a case of show us, don’t tell us. 

I’ll happily admit I’m no expert in this or any other subject, and we delegate the judging duties to those who are.

Mike Jennings from WAVE Design – which has been a partner on this campaign from the very beginning – has provided a few thoughts on the best nominations. I’ll borrow them here.

“The most compelling entries this year demonstrated ongoing improvement, customer-centred problem solving, and measurable outcomes tied to both commercial performance and broader impact.” 

Innovative outcomes – the all-important creation of value – were not a fluke for the high performers. They came out of a company’s culture, operations, and strategic intent.

Mike again: “The best submissions this year weren’t those with the flashiest technology — but those with a disciplined approach to discovering, delivering, and meaningfully evolving their products and services.”

The highest-scoring company overall described staff at all levels as being empowered to contribute ideas, with an organisational structure deliberately flat to encourage this. “Learning through posing hypotheses, discussion then through experiment is key, with a no-blame culture and acceptance of failure as a learning experience” they said. 

It has been a pleasure to learn about manufacturers like this one through the 50 Most Innovative 2025.

I’m grateful that Mike and our other judges have lent their wisdom to this task. Thanks Mike, Karen Lenton from ICN, Alan Lipman from AMGC, Hugh Ong from the Smartcrete CRC, Martin Broglia from Bonfiglioli Australia and New Zealand, and Stephen Noble from Australia Wide Engineering Recruitment.  

My huge thanks to everybody in this room and quite a few not in it for taking the effort involved in nominating. 

Further huge thanks also goes out to our sponsors. No adventure like this is possible without the backing of really cool people. Cheers to Australia Wide Engineering, the Industry Capability Network, Bonfiglioli, the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, TXM Lean Solutions, and the Smartcrete CRC.

Now it’s a pleasure to run with the theme of hugely ambitious startup manufacturers.    

Welcome to Dr Geoff Rogers, who is one of the nation’s most highly regarded engineers, an award-winning inventor, and co-founder of Doftek, which is taking the world’s first commercially viable active wheel alignment (AWA) system into production.