Mobilising Australia’s missing middle offers ways to improve innovation, increase industry competitiveness and tackle long-term economic problems among MSEs.
Despite the major contribution MSEs make to the Australian economy they are often overlooked. A better understand of MSEs will help policy and industry to treat them as a distinct cohort.
MSEs play a valuable role in our economic system through their ability to help diffuse technology and connect large and small firms. They also produce out-sized impacts for economic resilience, productivity and competitiveness because of their combination of:
- small business agility and emerging scale
- R&D intensity and export potential
- supply chain connections across regions and sectors.
The paper is the first in a series of thought-leadership from IISA to help develop practical solutions.
IISA will continue to look at the ‘missing middle’ and collaborate across government, industry and research to:
- explore success stories of thriving MSE segments in Australian regions and overseas
- highlight MSEs as a distinct cohort in innovation and growth programs
- consider ways to refine programs to uplift MSEs and meet their distinct needs
- identify effective levers that reduce barriers to MSE scale and innovate
- explore demand side factors for MSEs to innovate.
IISA covered this topic in its 2023 report Barriers to collaboration and commercialisation.