Skills for an innovative Australia to 2025 Draft background paper for the Skills Australia scenario development forum, February 7,

Innovation is a concept that is widely misunderstood. Up until the early 1980s, innovation was widely viewed as synonymous with the use of R&D by manufacturing firms to develop technical inventions. Policy was usually based on linear science-push models in which increased support for R&D and the education of scientists and engineers led to new inventions. Unfortunately, this view of innovation as based on R&D, science, technology and inventions is still widely held. The official definition of innovation that is accepted by Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and all countries of the European Union is defined in the OECD‟s (2005) Oslo Manual as follows: