Collaboration worth $46bn to the economy

Collaboration is a key solution to Australia’s productivity and innovation challenges, according to the latest Deloitte report commissioned by Google Australia.

In its Collaborative Economy report, Deloitte has put a value on the benefit: $46 billion a year - value of faster-growing, profitable businesses with collaboration at their core; and $9.3 billion a year - value if companies make the most of opportunities to collaborate more.

The other key findings of the report include:

• Companies that prioritise collaboration are five times more likely to experience a considerable increase in employment, twice as likely to be profitable and twice as likely to outgrow competitors.
• Only 20% of businesses without collaboration strategies outgrew the market, compared to 30% with a middling strategy and 52% with an important strategy.
• Only 24% of survey respondents said they had a collaboration strategy that was important for their business.
• Half of businesses have no collaboration strategy - or their people don’t know if they do.
• Over 35% of respondents said collaboration helps them work faster, while 18% said their work could be impossible without collaboration.

Deloitte Digital National Leader Frank Farrall said: “Collaboration, driven by a clear strategy, brings revenue growth, more profit, greater employee satisfaction, higher productivity, improved product quality and innovation.”

Deloitte Access Economics’ Partner Ric Simes said: “Australia is confronting very real issues around disruption, innovation and productivity, as productivity has fallen at an average 0.6% a year since 2007-08.

“Yet according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 36.6% of Australian businesses were innovative in 2012-13 and introduced new or significantly improved goods, services or processes. This was down from 41.3% on the year before.

“When we add up all the potential across Australian business, collaboration can play a critical role in driving productivity.”

Deloitte Access Economics Director John O’Mahony said: “At $46 billion, collaboration is worth around 3% of the value of the Australian economy each year; that’s the equivalent of a large sector such as agriculture or utilities.”

Farrall said: “Employees who collaborate are 10 times more likely to be satisfied with their job, over a third of our survey respondents said collaboration helps them work faster and three-quarters that collaboration improves the quality of work they produce.

“The concern is that more than half of Australian businesses are leaving it to chance. They have no collaboration strategy and are therefore missing out on what are very significant benefits for them, their people and the national economy.”