Govt plan to help business innovation

Businesses will get government help to invent and commercialise new products and enter global markets under a plan to be released within weeks.

But Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says it won't be a case of "picking winners", nor will it be a return to "endless cash programs and handouts".

For the past year, Mr Macfarlane has been working with industry, researchers and trainers to develop the National Industry Investment and Competitiveness Agenda.

The agenda is set to be released within weeks, the minister said.

Some of the proposals put forward have included employee share schemes, changes to intellectual property rules and competition policy and measures to break down barriers to global trade and investment.

There have also been ideas for improving training and skills, lowering the cost of doing business and building better economic infrastructure.

Mr Macfarlane said the economy was on the cusp of a third wave: the transition into higher value-added industries based on innovation, research and a sophisticated skills base.

The first wave involved farming and agriculture and the second wave focused on heavy manufacturing and commodity-based industries.

While he said the government would not pick winners, the best prospects for jobs lay in professional and business services, agribusiness, mining technology, energy, oil and gas, advanced manufacturing and medical technologies.

"The challenge for Australia is to nurture those strengths and run with them," Mr Macfarlane told the Sydney Institute on Tuesday.

Rather than take the attitude of "government knows best", the new plan would "set the context" for investment and industry-led growth.

Australian industry should be solving problems in collaboration with scientists and researchers.

"Just three per cent of Australian business involved in innovation turn to universities or higher education sources for ideas," the minister said.