Many great Australian ideas die before they’ve had a chance to live. At CSIRO, Dr Peter Mayfield aims to guide innovations across the valley of death to the pinnacle of success.
This story was originally published in the February 2025 issue of create with the headline “Intelligent innovation”.
Australia has a long history of innovation. Wi-Fi, the cochlear implant and the black box flight recorder are some of the more famous breakthroughs. More often than not, these innovations are nurtured and supported by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency.
Peter Mayfield is Executive Director – Environment, Energy and Resources at CSIRO, where, in the midst of the energy transition and dealing with the environmental impacts of climate change, he tries to balance the demands of industry with building an environmentally responsible future.
“I’m positive about the future,” Mayfield told create. “I think Australia has a lot of great innovators, whether they’re in companies, universities or at CSIRO or similar organisations.”
But with latest figures showing Australia’s R&D investment sitting at just 1.7 per cent of GDP, it’s important to make limited funding count. The key is collaboration, Mayfield said.
“Historically, Australian R&D has probably been a bit more competitive. But I think we’re getting better at how we collaborate. We need to take a multidisciplinary approach. Scientists, engineers and financiers need to work together. It’s not just the researcher saying we’re going to do X. It’s not just the company saying we’re going to do X. It’s everyone contributing to that outcome. And I think it takes an ecosystem to make innovation a success.”
Coordinating collaboration
Australia has the tools to continue to innovate, Mayfield said. It just needs to play to its strengths – leveraging intelligence and collaboration – and continue to punch above our weight. That’s CSIRO’s role: supporting and enhancing the capability of Australia’s innovators.
“We support research in many industries such as sustainable mining, energy and materials science, focusing on technologies that can be directly applied,” Mayfield said. “For example, in hydrogen-based reduction processes, to support low-carbon steelmaking, tackling challenges with ore quality and energy requirements.”
But getting to market can be a bigger task, with the gap between research and commercialisation commonly known as the valley of death.
“CSIRO regularly traverses this valley, and this gives us a great perspective. We see everything from primary research to commercialisation, and try to coordinate support at every stage.”
The key point in this journey is getting a project to the demonstration phase as early as possible.
“Often, we can perfect something in the lab that fails once you test it at that next step. You have to move it as early as possible to make sure it’s robust.”
Recognising this, CSIRO sets out to help businesses reach this phase more easily.
“We developed and ran programs called ON and Prime. These programs are geared around innovation and acceleration, giving people the tools to build the business canvas up front, look at the value proposition, understand where the blocks are and who the stakeholders are, and take that proposition to test whether it has validity and robustness.
“Those tools are open to the whole of Australia. We’ve had a lot of uptake, and so we think that’s been a very strong contributor in attracting capital.”
On the other side of the valley, Mayfield pointed to the CSIRO-led Main Sequence venture fund that helps startups and industry partners bring scientific innovations to market faster and with reduced risk. Set up to address the gap between research and commercialisation, the three funds now have more than $1 billion under management.
This whole-process approach helps to streamline the path from laboratory to commercial application for many businesses.
Read more: 4 engineers explain how Australia can become an innovation superpower
Centralising data
“Data analysis and AI are important, but they’re nothing new to us,” Mayfield said. “They’re just more visible now because of the computing-power explosion.”
CSIRO created Data61 back in 2015 specifically to support data-led decision-making. It provides support to government and businesses in AI and data science. “But we are always learning and changing, particularly in the environment space. In collaboration with the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, we’ve been doing a lot of work on how you federate data.”
This feeds into the Nature IQ initiative, which quantifies biodiversity data to guide conservation efforts. CSIRO’s genomics work also helps to develop resilient agricultural systems and adaptive responses to environmental changes.
“We use the power of genomics in agriculture to improve resistance to pests in various crops. This has potential across many other areas of agriculture and helps in understanding threats to biodiversity – for example, the threats to the Great Barrier Reef – and enables research into adaptation and mitigation strategies.”
This data capability also enables sustainable materials manufacturing, such as bioplastics and enzyme-based plastic recycling methods for polymers, through collaborations with companies such as Uluu and Samsara Eco.
Innovation takes many forms
A large focus is given to world-changing ideas, according to Mayfield. But innovation takes many forms – such as taking technology from one industry and finding applications in others.
“Sometimes this may look boring, but it’s very important and can have a huge impact. CSIRO’s work in Wodonga, on concentrated solar thermal power, is a great example of an innovative solution to managing the cost of heat. Or consider the trial underway in Port Macquarie to integrate electric vehicle batteries into the grid. These are examples of how we’re using existing technologies in new industries.”
Solar thermal, in particular, is an older technology that offers a better source of heat than gas, and is easily scalable. In an exciting future, Australia needs to recognise where it sits in the world.
“We won’t be able to compete with the larger nations on volume, but we can be a very intelligent niche player – as long as we continue to collaborate.”
