Getting Strategic With AI: AI Economic Blueprint for Australia

ByMatt Walsh

Getting Strategic With AI: At last, there is movement that Australia is accelerating its AI catch-up strategy through coordinated government action and private sector partnerships. The government has established AI expert groups and Digital Capability Centres while OpenAI released an “AI Economic Blueprint for Australia” showing user growth doubling over the past year. As the paper says:

“We are at an inflection point. The opportunity AI presents to spur productivity and increase prosperity is too compelling to forfeit. National investment in AI infrastructure today will form the backbone of future economic growth, create jobs, boost productivity and usher in a new generation of entrepreneurship.”

Watch for similar national AI strategies as countries recognise that AI capabilities are becoming essential strategic assets, not optional technology upgrades.

How is your organisation prioritising AI as a strategic capability to develop?

Further reading: Australia’s Artificial Intelligence Policy

Sustainability as Value Creation: With sustainability reporting on the near horizon for many organisations, sustainability as strategic differentiator can move beyond traditional CSR box-ticking to core value creation. Harvard Business Review identifies four key principles for strategic impact initiatives:

  • Listen before leaping
  • Deploy core strengths
  • Make impact drive value
  • Design for the long-run

Companies like Patagonia’s Worn Wear program demonstrate how circular economy principles create revenue streams while strengthening customer loyalty, proving that sustainable practices can simultaneously reduce costs and differentiate market positioning. Read the full HBR article for implementation guidance.

How could your organisation’s sustainability efforts be strategically aligned to become a source of competitive advantage rather than just compliance cost?


Creating Ecosystem Lock-in by Giving Away Knowhow: Lost in the headiness of NVIDIA’s valuation and tech darling status, you may not have clocked some of the cool stuff they are doing to build the railroads of the AI era. NVIDIA’s strategic shift to democratise AI through what they call NIMs (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) demonstrates the counterintuitive principle that while using physical assets depreciates their value, using and often giving away knowledge assets increases their value. CEO Jensen Huang unveiled NIMs as “AI microservices all packaged up “ that enable developers to “literally take these models, integrate them into your software packages, create AI agents” across industries from healthcare to finance to manufacturing. By making AI deployment as simple as developers downloading a container that is specifically built for your industry vertical, NVIDIA creates strategic dependence on their GPU/NPU infrastructure while ostensibly sharing technology freely, showing how sharing specifically targeted knowledge assets can create phenomenal value-creating ecosystems. Check out Huang’s keynote at CES 2025 for the full vision.

What knowledge assets could you systematically share to build ecosystem demand and dependence rather than hoarding that knowhow for competitive reasons?

Building Resilient Partnerships: The Trump regime’s haphazard tariff changes are not all doom and gloom, as other countries are doubling down on multilateralism as a strategic counter to this transactional unilateralism. While we’re seeing Japan, China, and South Korea seek to enhance regional cooperation, Australia is leading its own multilateral trade strategy, assuming the Chair of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership in January, and actively participating in Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (the world’s largest free trade agreement by GDP) with 15 Indo-Pacific countries including China. These agreements create alternatives to US-dominated trade arrangements, and signal a fundamental shift where middle powers are building strategic partnerships to hedge against American unpredictability, creating new coalitions that prioritise rules-based cooperation over bilateral deal-making. I starkly recall the time when I was CEO of a wealth management business and the political and commercial winds in our largest “trading partner” changed dramatically.  Having built a series of strong relationships with other similar organisations before this occurred helped us quickly replace lost revenues.

How is your organisation building resilient partnerships that can withstand shifts in major stakeholder relationships?

Further reading: Japan, China and South Korea discuss trilateral cooperation – AP News, Australia assumes CPTPP Chair 2025


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