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The lucky country can’t coast on luck any longer

Australia’s luck is running out. To stay competitive, we must embrace bold innovation, invest in tech and lead with vision — not rely on past advantages.

Cherie Mylordis and Salim Ismail Cherie Mylordis and Salim Ismail are speakers on strategy and future-focused leadership.
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Australia stands at a crossroads — and bold action, not luck, will shape its future prosperity, write Cherie Mylordis and Salim Ismail. Shutterstock.

From a distance, Australia appears to live up to its nickname, the ‘lucky country’— vast land, enviable stability and an economy that has weathered global storms better than most. But we have not made our own luck. We have coasted on natural resources, institutional strength and geographic good fortune.

Donald Horne coined the phrase ‘lucky country’ in 1964 as a warning. Luck can only get you so far. In today’s world, fortune does not favour the lucky.

Now that the dust from the most recent election has settled, with promises of a nation that is productive, innovative and world-class, we must ask what it means to be an ‘exponential nation’: a country that not only adapts to change but harnesses the accelerating curve of technology and innovation to solve large problems at scale.

We no longer live in a world where gradual change is the norm. In energy, computing, healthcare and finance, technological progress is accelerating.

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