Edition 1 August 2015

From flap-back sunhats to world-changing sombreros came an innovative travel business looking to save the planet one trip at a time.

Recent advances in information technology are expected to transform electricity markets worldwide, and research from the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne suggests customers who are informed about their energy use can save up to $50 on their electricity bill. This translates to a reduction of 212.40kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air per household each year.

Australia's largest household survey has revealed that the circumstances in which we grow up significantly impact our future income and wealth potential. Our parents' educational attainment and occupation, family makeup, and the age at which we move out of the family home—as well as immigrant status and age of migration—are key indicators of future income and wealth potential.

The world of investment banking may seem foreign, even forbidding, to outsiders. Yet it is highly attractive to Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE) graduates like Rannia Al-Salihi, and many alumni like Wayne Kent and Matt Wilson have built highly successful careers in the field. I speak with them to find out more about about the path that led them to investment banking, an industry that seems to require endless perseverance, long hours, and talent beyond measure. All three agree that mentoring and being mentored, multi-disciplinary talent, and an aptitude for client service are vital in this intensive yet highly rewarding field.

In its May 2015 budget, the Commonwealth Government announced a number of tax concessions for small business. On the assumption that many small business operators are swing voters, the concessions were judged politically attractive, with bipartisan support. However, for an economy struggling to boost lagging productivity, tax concessions that drive employment and investment for just one segment of the business sector will result in significant costs to the Australian economy.

Traversing disciplinary boundaries to advance our understanding of financial decision making.

Financial literacy levels in Australia are relatively low, yet Australians are increasingly forced to take more responsibility for their financial futures, in particular planning for retirement. Ongoing research is attempting to determine the best way to improve financial decision-making and long term behavioural outcomes. One promising avenue is early intervention to improve awareness and understanding of financial matters among young people, aimed at bringing about sustained behavioural change.

As homelessness in Australia continues to rise, long term intervention strategies are required to combat the consistent churning in and out of homelessness that many front line organisations regard as one of their biggest challenges.

The Melbourne Institute is actively engaged in partnerships to address such issues and concerns as those raised in Journeys Home. Journey to Social Inclusion (J2SI) is a pilot programme designed by the Sacred Heart Mission to provide intensive support to break the cycle of chronic homelessness.

Running a business and being your own boss sounds great but the road to success can be rocky. In the increasingly crowded world of business start-ups, how can budding entrepreneurs make themselves stand out from the crowd and achieve bottom line results?

Melbourne has a thriving entrepreneurial community, with a powerful combination of scientific research, high tech design and manufacturing, and innovative thinkers. Australia’s newest and most advanced entrepreneurship training, located at the centre of Parkville’s investigative hub, builds on this long ingrained pedigree.

“I won’t ever forget the agony of waiting for the first sale—it was excruciating,” says Founding Director of redballoon.com.au and Shark on Network TEN’s business reality program, Shark Tank Australia, Naomi Simson.

The future of work is a major strategic issue facing governments, corporations and communities. Developments are occurring at a rapid pace, and are far reaching. Automation and intuitive technologies are making many jobs and occupations that have been around for years obsolete, and creating new jobs that just a few years ago seemed alien, as well as transforming many existing jobs in unexpected ways. Technology presents amazing possibilities to free us from the drudgery of repetitive work tasks and challenges our perceptions of skilled and meaningful work. It is both exciting and scary.

In 1995 the Karpin Report delivered comprehensive insight into Australia's workplace leadership and provided recommendations on how to best develop business leaders. The report recognised the need for a robust 'enterprise culture' and spoke of 'leadership competencies' beyond traditional management. Twenty years on, how are we going?

Diversity has become the new buzz word in business, but what does it really mean? Dr Jesse Olsen from the Centre for Workplace Leadership argues that there are significant differences in how organisations realise and manage diversity, and not all approaches are founded in fairness and equality.

Only during wartime has government debt in advanced economies been at a higher level than it is today. Seven years after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) many advanced economies have barely begun to recover, particularly in Europe where many countries are still dealing with high unemployment, deflationary tendencies and debt overhang. The favourable global environment has taken a turn for the worse, as commodity prices have declined and the strengthening US dollar has raised debt servicing burdens for many emerging markets. Thought leader in international macroeconomics and Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Finance System at Harvard Kennedy School, Professor Carmen Reinhart mapped the challenges for advanced and emerging markets towards global economic recovery in the 2015 David Finch Lecture at the University of Melbourne.

With a growing population, projected to top 36 million by 2050, and one of the most expensive property markets in the world, is Australia in the midst of a housing affordability crisis?

Anywhere in the world, small and family business predominates, at least numerically. For all their limitations, families have always been the most reliable basis for pooling and managing capital in societies where property rights are insecure and/or bank finance difficult to secure. Only within the last 100 years have limited liability public companies taken over the commanding heights of Westernised economies.

For some, referring to the family’s bread and butter is merely a turn of phrase, but for Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE) alumna Wendy Yap, the meaning is literal. Taking the helm of her family’s US based real estate business at the tender age of 20, she met the challenge head on, fully aware that her lineage did not equate to guaranteed success. This persistence for continued innovation and drive, combined with practical experience and formal education, has underpinned the powerful businesswoman’s enduring success. Rising to the economic challenges of the nineties and the needs of the nation, Yap went on to create a household name in Sari Roti—PT Nippon Indosari Corpindo Tbk (sariroti.com)—now the largest massmarket producer of Japanese-style breads in Asia, excluding Japan.

In the eight years after 2003, global prices, in real terms, for most energy and metals commodities and for some agricultural commodities, rose to their highest levels ever. Indonesian exports in inflation-adjusted US dollars more than quadrupled in value between 2003 and 2011 and the share of commodities in total exports rose from 52% to 68%. Indonesian average incomes grew strongly for a while, without a sustained focus on policies supporting economic growth.

When will your next post go viral—or will it never?

Many of us will have started taking first steps towards networking while at university, through social clubs and classroom projects. Often, these friendships endure and we find ourselves catching up with an old university mate at the odd social or business function.

Alumni, friends, and strong community and industry partnerships play essential roles in helping us shape tomorrow’s leaders and contribute to the social and economic fabric of Australia and the region.