The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) undertook an ARC-funded Learned Academies Special Project (LASP) on industry technology readiness in Australia from 2017-2020. Throughout that project, ATSE developed, applied and refined the methodological approach to assessing industry technology readiness described in this paper, and has since adapted and applied the methodology as a lens to assess other issues including potential impact of research commercialisation.
ATSE’s TRAM project aimed to identify suitable measures for technology awareness, adoption and impact in Australia, and allow measurement of the progress of Australian businesses and governments against defined criteria, metrics and indicators. It was important to ATSE that the methodology and our assessments could be replicated — for example as a progress tracking mechanism, or to evaluate a policy intervention.
As a Learned Academy of independent experts, ATSE’s mission is to help Australians understand and use technology to solve complex problems. At the conclusion of this project, ATSE is making our methodology publicly available so that any entity or person can use and adapt it to conduct their own assessments, using this method as a lens to assess any sector’s readiness for a future scenario, and construct a narrative which identifies key opportunities and barriers.
During our ARC-funded project ATSE developed and successfully applied this technology readiness assessment methodology to three key Australian industry sectors – transport, healthcare, and waste and resource recovery. The key output of this work was an analysis of the technology potential, applications and opportunities across the sectors in the decade 2020-2030, including factors that are enabling or impeding technology uptake.
From this work, ATSE developed three roadmaps in the areas of transport, healthcare and waste and resource recovery, identifying what these Australian industry sectors needed in order to maintain currency with new technologies and fully integrate these technologies to maximise competitive advantage. ATSE’s three reports also identified technology research areas to address cutting-edge industry problems and guide investment decisions for developing workforce capabilities. These reports will help guide the implementation of programs by government, industry and research organisations, and ensure a higher quality workforce with skills matched to future demand.
