In August, 2008, David Admans was engaged by the Australian Government Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research to establish and lead the Enterprise Connect (EC) Innovative Regions Centre. The purpose of the Centre was to promote the economic advantages that innovative regions derived from such activity.
In his four years in this role, David established the Centre, developed the operational models, hired and trained the staff and delivered the model. Over the four years that he lead the team of 11 Innovative Regions Facilitators, 2 Senior Research Staff and a small team of program administration staff. The Centre has been successful in establishing a leading innovation brokerage role in the ten initial regions. This success was recognised by the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies in it’s 2011 report for the Australian Business Foundation .
As a result of this work, over 4,000 enterprises have been involved in Innovative Regions Centre activities and the concept of using Innovative Regions Facilitators to broker innovation and greater collaboration between firms has demonstrated that there are clear economic development benefits for communities that embrace innovation, particularly in those regions that build entrepreneurial capacity.
