FREE LECTURE: "What's Business got to do with it?"

The History of ideas and innovation will be discussed whilst contesting the notion that innovation has to yield commercial results. Speakers from different disciplines will explore models of non-commercial innovation and the potential of ideas being percieved as cultural rather than economic capital.

Speakers: Peter Newman - Director Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University Is it possible to make changes to the environment without waiting for governent policies to evolve? Do innovative environmental ideas require business endorsement before they can make a difference? What is the role of creativity in sustainability? Peter Sinden - Senior Lecturer, Law School, University of WA. How can we balance IP ownership of research and society's access to information? What place does business have in the sphere of academia, technology, sciences and the arts? Might business drive or stifle the innovative process? Is the push for uniform international standards of IP Law and enforcement procedures through the WTO:TRIPS actually creating an "information poverty trap" for the majority of nations? What are the implications fo this for the net IP importing states? Stuart Bunt - Neuroscientist, President UWA Union and SymbioticA Scientific Director “If we end up with too much commerce driving science, we may be driving it down avenues that are not acceptable to everyone in our society” Lord Winston Non-utilitarian research enriches our culture but it is very hard to quantify this value in dollars and cents. What are the implications of the current imperative imposed on not for profit universities to behave in a business like fashion? Oron Catts – SymbioticA Artistic Director – on non-utilitarian innovation in the arts; artistic and cultural strategies to free knowledge and innovation to the public domain. The Australia Council’s shift in priorities leaving innovative research and development out of the culture equation.