Long-horizon innovation is research and development where the journey from discovery to real-world impact can take years or even decades. Although it has produced many of Australia’s greatest technological achievements, there are many years and hurdles between the initial good idea and turning those breakthroughs into successful businesses.
In the first part of our two-part series on long-horizon innovation, we looked at why this type of research and development (R&D) matters to Australia’s future, and what it takes to sustain it over the long term. In this second part, we look at what happens as those ideas move towards commercialisation, and the ecosystem, capabilities, and capital needed to turn breakthrough innovation into successful businesses.
Australia has already shown what is possible, with long-term R&D helping create companies such as Cochlear, CSL, and ResMed, alongside a new generation of Australian businesses developing technologies in aerospace, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, and biotechnology. Yet many promising discoveries never complete the journey from laboratory to market.
That’s because building a successful business around breakthrough research requires much more than scientific excellence. The journey to commercialisation can involve years of technical development, manufacturing, regulatory approvals, market validation, specialist recruitment, and sustained investment before meaningful revenue is generated.
And that’s a journey few organisations can support on their own.
Great technologies don’t always become great businesses
Scientific discovery and commercial success are not the same thing.
Commercialisation is where science meets manufacturing, regulation, customers, and capital, and commercial success depends on making progress across all these fronts, often at the same time.
A breakthrough may demonstrate that a technology works. However, building a sustainable business around that breakthrough requires that technology to solve a genuine problem, satisfy regulators, attract customers, secure investment, develop manufacturing capability, and compete in global markets. Any of these steps can take years and each stage introduces new risks, longer timelines, and additional capital requirements.
Queensland-based Gilmour Space Technologies illustrates the scale of that challenge. Since being founded in 2013, the company has spent more than a decade developing Australia’s sovereign rocket launch capability. Over 13 years, it has designed and tested rocket engines, built advanced manufacturing capability, established a launch site in North Queensland, navigated extensive regulatory approvals, and assembled a highly specialised workforce – all before generating revenue from commercial launch activities. And while Gilmour Space has raised more than $262 million in funding to support its long-horizon innovation, the bulk of that has been raised in the last 5 years and the scene is now set for the company to prepare for its largest ever funding round. [1] Gilmour Space’s journey demonstrates how long-horizon innovators often need years of technical progress and milestones to attract increasing levels of investment as they move towards commercialisation.
Many of Australia’s most successful innovation companies have followed similar paths. Cochlear required more than 15 years of research and development before its implant reached the market. BluGlass, which began as a Macquarie University spinout developing semiconductor technology for LEDs and solar cells, has progressively evolved into a supplier of advanced laser technologies supporting defence, aerospace, and quantum applications.
These businesses succeeded because they were able to continue progressing through years of uncertainty while their technology, markets, and business models matured.
Australian Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt believes Australia’s innovation ecosystem needs to recognise these realities. He says, “Research works on decade-long horizons. And when we improve our sovereign research system, we need to think on those timeframes, not in terms of one-off programs.”
The long-horizon funding challenge
Long-horizon innovation often falls into a difficult part of the funding landscape.
Projects may have moved beyond fundamental research while remaining years away from commercial revenue. They may involve valuable intellectual property but still face technical uncertainty, lengthy regulatory processes, or complex manufacturing challenges. They may even be working on technologies for which no established market exists because they are difficult to imagine becoming commercially viable at the time. Think of human flight in the age of the Wright brothers or, more recently, the decades of research that went into creating the mRNA technology that was ultimately used to rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines. These characteristics make such projects difficult to assess using traditional funding models designed around predictable cash flow, shorter commercial timeframes, or clearer pathways to investor returns or exits.
The challenge is particularly evident in sectors such as biotechnology, aerospace, quantum technologies, advanced manufacturing, and robotics, where commercial development frequently extends over many years. Ausbiotech CEO Rebekah Cassidy says it routinely takes more than a decade for biotech, medtech or healthtech companies to progress their discoveries. [2]
Researchers from Harvard Law School have identified several reasons why financing research and development is inherently difficult, including significant upfront investment, uncertain technical outcomes, and long delays between investment and commercial returns. [3] Those characteristics are common features of long-horizon innovation. The need – and cost – to attract and retain specialist talent also comes into the mix.
The result is that many businesses investing in long-horizon research experience periods where technical progress continues but access to capital becomes increasingly constrained. For example, Rebekah Cassidy says life sciences companies “bridge multiple commercial ‘valleys of death’ as they spin out of research into pre-clinical development, clinical trials, regulatory approval and manufacturing scale-up before revenue generation through market access is even possible.”
This raises a broader question about who carries the risk of supporting long-horizon innovation until businesses reach maturity. For Australia, the answer matters beyond the success of individual companies, because sustained investment in long-horizon innovation helps determine whether critical technologies and capabilities are developed here or elsewhere.
Why traditional funding models struggle
No single funding source is designed to support long-horizon innovation from discovery through to global commercial success.
Government funding plays an important role in supporting foundational research and early-stage development. Venture capital can accelerate growth once commercial opportunities become clearer. Customer revenue eventually becomes the engine of expansion. Traditional debt may become appropriate once businesses establish predictable income and assets.
Unfortunately, long-horizon innovation rarely follows such a neat progression.
Development timelines frequently extend beyond original expectations, markets evolve, or technologies find applications that were never anticipated when the research began. Businesses may need to undertake multiple rounds of product development, clinical trials, certification, or demonstration before they can reach meaningful commercial scale. Long-horizon research therefore needs multiple sources of sustained funding to succeed.
In its submission to the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD), deep-tech incubator Cicada Innovations argues that companies developing breakthrough technologies “do not fail for lack of ideas; they fail for lack of scaling finance, procurement opportunities, leadership capability, and demonstration projects.” [4]
Supporting long-horizon innovation therefore requires more than capital alone. It requires a system capable of supporting businesses through each stage of commercial development.
Why long-horizon innovation needs an ecosystem
Long-horizon innovation depends on a support system in which universities, governments, industry, and the finance sector each play distinct but interconnected roles as technologies move from research to commercialisation.
Universities and publicly funded research organisations play an important part of this system, generating new knowledge and intellectual property, and developing the highly skilled researchers that contribute to Australia’s innovation pipeline. At the same time, significant research and development takes place within industry, as businesses develop new technologies, products, and processes, and build the expertise needed to bring them to market. Many of Australia’s most successful technology companies, including Cochlear and BluGlass, have their origins in university research, while others have emerged directly from industry.
Government supports innovation through research funding, competitive grant programs and the Research and Development Tax Incentive (R&DTI), which encourages businesses to invest in eligible R&D by offsetting part of the cost of undertaking research and development. Together, these programs help businesses pursue research that may take years to generate commercial returns.
Industry partners, incubators and accelerators help bridge the gap between research and commercialisation by providing access to technical expertise, manufacturing capability, customer networks, mentoring and demonstration opportunities. These collaborations help emerging technologies progress from proof of concept towards commercial application.
The finance sector also plays an important role. Equity investors, including angel investors and venture capital funds, can provide the capital needed to accelerate commercial growth. Specialist R&D finance – such as Radium Advances – complements these funding sources by allowing eligible businesses to access their anticipated R&DTI refund earlier. By improving cash flow during lengthy development cycles, R&D finance helps businesses continue investing in research, retain specialist staff, purchase equipment, and progress towards technical, regulatory, and commercial milestones without unnecessarily diluting equity.
The development of the Cochlear implant illustrates how these different parts of the ecosystem can work together. University research, government funding, commercial partnerships, and private investment all contributed to transforming Professor Graeme Clark’s breakthrough research into one of Australia’s most successful medical technology companies. [5] Today’s innovators in fields such as biotechnology, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and quantum technologies continue to lean on similar combinations of expertise, partnerships, and capital as they work to bring the next generation of breakthrough technologies to market.
Australia’s opportunity
Australia consistently produces research of the highest international standard. The greater challenge is converting more of those discoveries into globally competitive businesses. That’s one of the aims of the Federal Government’s recent SERD review. Review chair Robyn Denholm says Australia too often “discovers and the world commercialises”.
The SERD discussion paper identified that “Australia is a high performer in research. We produce 3.5% of the world’s publications and 5.8% of the world’s citations, and 15% of Australian publications are in the top 10% of global publications.” However, our universities are not collaborating with industry enough, with the nation ranking the lowest in the OECD for university-business collaboration. [7]
As SERD argued, Australia already has the research capability needed to succeed. The challenge is strengthening the long-term research, development and innovation ecosystem so more discoveries become commercial outcomes that deliver economic and societal benefit. One step Australia has made is to negotiate entry to Horizon Europe, the world’s largest pooled research funding program for international science and innovation collaboration. From 2027, Australian researchers will have access to seven-year funding cycles via the A$153.27 billion funding pool and, perhaps most importantly, will have the ability to not only join projects but to lead them. [8]
Universities Australia Chief Executive Officer Luke Sheehy describes research and development as “the engine room of productivity, economic growth and living standards” and argues that investment in R&D is one of the most effective ways to build new industries and improve national prosperity. And these rewards extend well beyond individual businesses: Robyn Denholm says, “When research becomes industry, productivity rises. When productivity rises, wages grow. When industries grow locally, supply chains strengthen and resilience improves.”
Supporting the next breakthrough
Long-horizon innovation asks organisations to commit to ideas whose full value may not be realised for many years. But few businesses can make that journey alone. They require support from universities, governments, researchers, industry partners, investors, and specialist finance providers at different stages of development.
Supporting long-horizon innovation also requires a different outlook. Research that develops over decades cannot always be measured against short-term commercial expectations or investment horizons. It needs an ecosystem prepared to take risks, provide patient and sustained capital, and give promising technologies the time and space to mature.
That approach will be essential if Australia wants to create more companies like Cochlear, CSL, and BluGlass, and help emerging businesses such as Gilmour Space realise their commercial potential.
At Radium Capital, we see R&D finance as one part of that broader innovation ecosystem. By helping innovative businesses maintain momentum between key milestones, specialist R&D funding can support the long-term commercial journey that turns ambitious research into globally competitive Australian industries.
[1] Bennett, Tess (13 July, 2026). “Gilmour Space lift-off will open a new frontier for region”. Australian Financial Review. [Online]. Available at: https://www.afr.com/technology/gilmour-space-liftoff-will-open-a-new-frontier-for-region-20260629-p60avz
[2] AusBiotech (5 June, 2026). “Opposition to proposed RDTI change unites Australia’s biotech, medtech and health tech sector”. AusBiotech. [online]. Available at:https://www.ausbiotech.org/ABT/News/Media-Releases/Opposition_to_proposed%20RDTI_change_unites_Australias_biotech_medtech_and_health_tech.aspx
[3] Williamson, S., Babcock, A. and He, A. (25 August, 2020). “Funding the Future: Investing in Long-Horizon Innovation”. Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance. [Online]. Available at: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/25/funding-the-future-investing-in-long-horizon-innovation/
[4] Cicada Innovations (29 September 2025). Published response to SERD Issues Paper No. 3: RD&I incentives. [online]. Available at: https://consult.industry.gov.au/strategic-examination-rd-issues-papers/issues-paper-3/view/15
[5] Bionics Institute. “The Cochlear blueprint for successful innovation with CEO Dig Howitt”. Med Tech Talks. [online]. Available at: https://www.bionicsinstitute.org/podcasts-videos-media/the-cochlear-blueprint-for-successful-innovation-with-ceo-dig-howitt/
[6] Australian Government, Department of Industry, Science and Resources (12 February, 2025). Strategic Examination of Research and Development: discussion paper. Australian Government. [online]. Available at: https://consult.industry.gov.au/strategic-examination-rd-discussion-paper
[7] Husic, E. (12 February, 2025). “Examination of R&D to build a Future Made in Australia”. Australian Government Media Release. [online]. Available at: https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-releases/examination-rd-build-future-made-australia
[8] University World News (12 June, 2026). “Australia’s research commercialisation challenge”. University World News. [online]. Available at: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260612124526770