- Home
- About veski
- veski board
- veski innovation fellows
- Timothy Scott
- Benjamin Marsland
- Pierluigi Mancarella
- Vihandha Wickramasinghe
- Jon Shah
- Roger Pocock
- Richard Sandberg
- Colby Zaph
- Kenneth Crozier
- Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Colette McKay
- Luke Connal
- Mark Dawson
- Cameron Simmons
- Tiffany Walsh
- Seth Masters
- Christopher McNeill
- Matthew Call
- Edwin van Leeuwen
- Mark Shackleton
- Ross Dickins
- Ygal Haupt
- Sarah Hosking
- Michael Cowley
- Alyssa Barry
- Gareth Forde
- Marcus Pandy
- Andrew Holmes
- veski fellows
- organisational structure
- veski annual review
- veski impacts
- veski standard
- veski pin
- Contact us
- veski foundation
- Fellowships
- Programs
- News & Events
- News
- Events
- Galleries
- Newsletters
- in conversation
- veski twitter
- veski family in the media
- veski's portraits of innovation
- A banquet of problems to be solved
- A novel approach
- A very special challenge
- At the crossroad of sport and science
- Engineering a better quality of life
- Everything at her fingertips
- Forward propulsion
- Going to the ends of the earth to cure melanoma
- His link to the past and bridge to the future
- Hitting the right note
- Holding up his side of the bargain
- Lighting the way to better child cancer outcomes
- Links and reconnections
- Mining his talent to make a difference
- Putting Melbourne's science on the global stage
- Ready, set, go: the future of locomotion
- Setting his own path
- Springboarding into a slam-dunk for science
- The lens of experience
- Where dreams are made
- veski videos
- People
- veski board
- veski innovation fellows
- Timothy Scott
- Benjamin Marsland
- Pierluigi Mancarella
- Vihandha Wickramasinghe
- Jon Shah
- Roger Pocock
- Richard Sandberg
- Colby Zaph
- Kenneth Crozier
- Ethan Goddard-Borger
- Colette McKay
- Luke Connal
- Mark Dawson
- Cameron Simmons
- Tiffany Walsh
- Seth Masters
- Christopher McNeill
- Matthew Call
- Edwin van Leeuwen
- Mark Shackleton
- Ross Dickins
- Ygal Haupt
- Sarah Hosking
- Michael Cowley
- Alyssa Barry
- Gareth Forde
- Marcus Pandy
- Andrew Holmes
- Victoria Prize recipients
- Victoria Fellows
- veski sustainable agriculture fellows
- veski inspiring women fellows
- veski connection
- PAHMR recipients
Melbourne better at start-ups and connections: Google's Leeder

At the first RMIT Business Breakfast for 2013, Google’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand, Mr Nick Leeder gave more than 100 representatives of business, government, academia and the media an outline of how we can work together to build Australia’s digital economy.
The event, supported by veski, Ernst & Young and RMIT University, focused on innovation and the digital economy, and drew upon Mr Leeder’s work with Google to champion the creation of Australia’s very own 'Silicon Valley' or 'Silicon Beach' as he refers to it.
In his presentation, which was followed by a number of questions from venture capitalists, academics and business leaders, Nick reinforced the fact that there is an incredible talent pool in Australia. He said there was particular talent in the engineering space evidenced by Australia being home to one of Google’s largest engineering centres.
As the head of Google in Australia and New Zealand, Nick is extremely interested in where Australia will head next with its digital economy, and says that a report they commissioned in 2010 showed the digital economy was worth $50 billion. A figure he says should be $70 billion by 2015.
The presentation occurred in the same week as the Prime Minister's launch of the Government's Innovation Statement, and Nick Leeder confirmed the importance of high productivity precincts, which were a focus of the Statement.
“We want to make sure Australia is well positioned to take advantage of what comes next … There’s a social, cultural and educational shift underway and we think this is critical in making sure Australia’s well positioned on these fronts”, Nick said.
veski chief executive officer, Ms Julia L Page, concluded the event by reinforcing statements Nick had made in a recent opinion piece about the talent we have at home.
“As the ceo of veski, I’m fortunate enough to engage with talented individuals who have the cultural mindset needed to be part of the globally connected economy,” Ms Page said.
“Our next task is to engage and support these and other talented Australians to build critical mass because as Nick has said ‘we’re big enough to accomplish big things on the world stage, but we're also small enough that even a couple of people with a great idea can have a big impact”.
Nick talked about why Australia needs its own Silicon Valley saying the American area “creates an enormous pool of capability for the whole economy to draw upon. It creates the engineers and the technicians who can help businesses navigate these changes really well”.
Talking about investment and venture capital money, Leeder said while there is money in Australia “the amount of it that ends up going offshore and back through the Valley shows there’s an issue. It’s not a money issue. It’s actually a critical mass issue.”
He said Google finds the start up community lacks some mass and “we (Google) need to find out how universities can better connect in with that community and companies like Google. I think that between the three of those groups we can start to create some mass,” he said.
Another point he raised, which supports veski’s work with the inspiring students and teachers program, was a need to focus on promoting study and careers in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.
Ms Page said "veski's new inspiring students and teachers program aims to lift the participation rate in the sciences and will hopefully lead to more students continuing studies in the STEM fields."
veski’s support of the RMIT Business Breakfast series, in partnership with Ernst & Young and RMIT University, is part of our efforts to foster discussion and collaboration across the business, government and academic sectors.
veski connection members in the news
Apr 2020 | Royal Society
Prof Jane Visavader, 2018 Victoria Prize for Science & Innovation recipient, elected to the Royal Societyin 2020
“The real benefit of increasing fabrication rates is the transition from prototyping, making one offs, to actually going into production.”
Assoc Prof Timothy Scott
Nov 2019 | Bionics Institute
Dr Thushara Perera, 2016 Victoria Fellow, received the prestigious AMP Foundation’s Tomorrow Fund
Tweets from @veskiorg
Tweets by @veskiorg