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Sunshine Coast on the world stage
28 October 2006
The significance of our region’s involvement in the Paris-based OECD project on world regions and their universities was made more obvious at the ‘wrap-up’ conference in Copenhagen last week, which SunROC Chief Executive Officer Graeme Pearce and I attended.
The OECD is now planning the launch of their publication of this project next year, to which Ministers and senior politicians from around the world are to be invited to discuss the outcomes. The Sunshine-Fraser Coast will feature in that publication, so the international visibility of the Coast will move to a new level.
Even following the papers I delivered at the conference, it was evident that there was an enormous interest in our region which had previously been unknown to many of the participants.
In listening to presentations from the other 13 regions in the OECD study, however, it was a sobering reminder of how much more is left to be done if we are to become globally competitive as a region in the rapidly evolving ‘knowledge economy’. Some of the other regions are moving much more quickly than us, helped by schemes such as European Union innovation funding, in which 300 billion euros are accessible by the highly unified regional bodies with various kinds of science and technology parks and innovation centres.
Like the other world regions, the Sunshine-Fraser Coast committee, led by Graeme Pearce, now has to address how it will use the OECD report generally, and our case study specifically, to advance regional unity and momentum. Business, local governments and the University need to work together to coalesce their interests for regional benefit, and there are meetings being arranged ahead of wide circulation of the OECD study.
Professor Paul Thomas is Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Sunshine Coast.