The NSW Innovation Blueprint 2035: What does it actually deliver?

By Dr John H Howard

The NSW Innovation Blueprint 2035 provides a valuable strategic foundation for positioning innovation at the heart of the state’s economic and social missions, including housing, clean energy, and advanced industries.

It affirms a clear role for government in coordination, investment, and vision-setting and maps a range of early-stage initiatives with the potential to be scaled.

While many actions remain conceptual, the Blueprint offers a coherent starting point for more integrated, whole-of-government innovation policy. Its greatest opportunity lies in broadening its scope—embracing social, service, and public sector innovation—to better harness the diverse capabilities across NSW and deliver inclusive, system-wide transformation.

What Is the Blueprint?

The NSW Innovation Blueprint 2035 has a strategic orientation and should not be interpreted as a program delivery plan. As a strategic document, it plays three major public policy roles:

• Signalling intent and alignment: It seeks to align innovation with broader government missions—housing, net zero, manufacturing—and positions NSW in global innovation discourse.

• Legitimising government presence in the ecosystem: It reaffirms that public investment, coordination, and vision-setting are valid roles for state government.

• Cataloguing existing activity: Much of the Blueprint is a stocktake of current programs, giving the appearance of a coherent framework.

From this, it follows that most proposed actions are at early or conceptual stages:

• They use cautious verbs (consider, explore, etc) and often lack delivery models or funding pathways.

• A handful of actions reflect interventions already in place (Tech Central transition, MVP Ventures, FISP) and could be scaled.

• Institutional reform is tentatively addressed but lacks clarity on governance, budget, and leadership beyond aspirational commentary.

Thus, the Blueprint is rich in diagnosis and clear in vision but light on actionable commitments. In this way, the greatest value of the Blueprint may, in fact, be political. That is:

• It signals a willingness to reform while leaving hard decisions for future budget processes and ministerial directives.

• It shows moderate-to-strong intent in infrastructure investment, early-stage funding programs, and institutional reform.

• More ambitious actions (e.g. creating new funds or networks) are largely deferred through language that avoids binding commitments.

The 18 specific actions set out under the Blueprint’s five Key Areas of Action (listed on page 31) can be grouped according to language that signals the level of commitment and intent—as either substantive or perfunctory. The groupings reflect the extensive use of qualifying verbs–so often found in government strategic documents and policy papers.

Six of the Blueprint’s 18 actions are identified as substantive and 12 as perfunctory.  The basis for the grouping is provided in the Addendum to this Insight. It identifies the qualifying verbs, the signal the action description sends concerning commitment, and the prospective readiness for action.

Some Limitations in Scope

The scope of the Blueprint is constrained in several ways. Areas of concern are canvased below.

Sectoral Focus is Constrained

The Blueprint prioritises innovation linked to advanced manufacturing, life sciences and biotech (such as RNA and medtech), clean energy and decarbonisation, and software, digital technologies, and quantum computing. These are significant, high-value sectors commonly favoured in innovation strategies due to their global growth potential and strong connections to research and development intensity. However, the Blueprint largely overlooks several critical areas.

Construction innovation is mainly referenced in the context of housing affordability, while the creative industries—central to NSW’s cultural and economic identity—receive little attention. Similarly, education technology, defence, logistics, agriculture (aside from a token reference to agtech), and tourism (which is important to NSW and, in fact, highly technology-intensive) are neglected.

The contributions to innovation from the humanities, arts, and social sciences are absent, as is any substantial recognition of social innovation. As a result, the Blueprint conveys a narrow corridor of government interest, risking missed opportunities in adjacent sectors that are either already undergoing transformation or are in need of innovation to boost productivity and maintain competitiveness.

Innovation Definitions Remain Implicit

The Blueprint does not explicitly discuss what constitutes innovation. This omission is not merely academic—it has direct strategic implications. Innovation is implicitly framed as product and process innovation within growth-oriented firms.

Other forms of innovation—such as service innovation, organisational innovation, policy innovation, and user-driven innovation—are either marginal or entirely absent. Public sector innovation is referenced primarily in the context of procurement rather than being treated as a transformation domain in its own right.

More concerning is that despite the document’s strong Acknowledgment of Country, there is no acknowledgement of informal or Indigenous innovation. Indigenous innovation—particularly in land management, community health, education, and cultural industries—offers rich and often underappreciated contributions to innovation ecosystems.

By failing to adopt a more inclusive and expanded definitional frame, the Blueprint reinforces a commercial lens and, in doing so, limits the perceived legitimacy of innovation occurring in non-commercial or community-based settings.

Consequences of this Narrow Focus

These limitations carry tangible consequences. The narrow focus of the Blueprint may:

• Risk policy fragmentation: Individual line agencies may undertake innovation initiatives in areas such as health, education, and justice without overarching alignment or strategic coordination.

• Undervalue community capabilities: Social enterprises, charities, and not-for-profit organisations frequently generate valuable innovations, yet they are absent from the Blueprint’s vision.

• Result in a loss of public legitimacy: Innovation policy may become viewed as concerned only with “apps and accelerators” rather than as a force for meaningful, everyday improvements in people’s lives.

• Exclude social and service innovation: Without a more comprehensive and inclusive innovation agenda, the government may find it difficult to respond effectively to complex, cross-cutting challenges—such as climate change, ageing populations, entrenched inequality, or the resilience of regional communities.

Conclusion

The NSW Innovation Blueprint 2035 provides a valuable anchor for aligning the State’s innovation agenda with economic missions, capital markets, and deep technology. However, several significant limitations constrict its effectiveness.

It does not adopt a systems view of innovation or engage meaningfully with social innovation or the transformation of public services. Its focus is narrowly confined to a select group of industrial sectors, overlooking broader domains of productive potential across society. As a result, the Blueprint’s capacity to support inclusive, sustainable, and holistic development appears diminished.

A more impactful and resilient approach would adopt a broad-based innovation policy that values innovation not only in startups and research institutions but also in local neighbourhoods, councils, care settings, schools, and community organisations, where transformative ideas and practices also emerge and take hold.

Addendum: Summary and Analysis of Actions

As indicated previously, the 18 specific actions set out under the Blueprint’s five Key Areas of Action (and listed on page 31) can be grouped according to language that signals the level of commitment and intent—from substantive to perfunctory (or cursory). Details are provided below.

Only six actions can be classified as substantive, most of which are already active programs, clearly funded initiatives, or announced reforms. These are listed below.

Twelve actions are perfunctory, using hedging verbs like “consider,” “explore,” “examine,” or “investigate.” These should be treated as intentions for action to evaluate rather than commitments to implement. Some actions are ambiguous in scope, timing, or budget, even where language suggests support. These actions are listed below.