Rowan Gilmore has quit his post as the chief executive of the Australian Institute for Commercialisation, admitting that conditions for start-ups haven\u2019t greatly improved during his tenure.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gilmore says he will be \u201clooking for a new challenge\u201d after departing the AIC. Dr John Kapeleris, currently deputy chief executive, will be interim CEO of the organisation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During Gilmore\u2019s tenure, nearly 2,000 businesses have received help getting their ideas to market, via programs such as TechFast, Tech Clinic and Commercialisation Bootcamps.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, Gilmore says he \u201cisn\u2019t sure\u201d if overall assistance for Australian start-ups had noticeably improved during his time at the helm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at Commercialisation Australia, it has just a fraction of the funding it used to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBusiness investment in R&D has doubled over the last decade, which is positive, but when you look at the number of companies now competing and the common IP used by many of them, it\u2019s hard to create new start-up companies.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gilmore says the venture capital system in Australia is \u201cbroken\u201d for businesses seeking early-stage funding.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cA large number of investors are retreating and the amount of dollars going into early-stage start-ups is reduced, which is horrible,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe returns for VCs in the last 20 years or so haven\u2019t been good. There\u2019s always space for biotech start-ups in their portfolios, but other businesses, such as serviced-based businesses, will struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n David Barbagallo, chair of the AIC, paid tribute to Gilmore, saying: \u201cRowan has been a superb and effective leader of the AIC, motivating his team of business experts to assist entrepreneurs, researchers, and small business in the commercialisation of their IP.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSince Rowan joined the AIC, his team has helped more than 2,000 companies, educated nearly 3,000 individuals through its Commercialisation Bootcamps and Ideas2Market programs, and put together over 200 collaborations between industry and research organisations or other businesses, and helped establish new value chains in sectors such as clean tech, energy, and agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rowan Gilmore has quit his post as the chief executive of the Australian Institute for Commercialisation, admitting that conditions for<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44250"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}