About the Author

Ben Kehoe has worked for four decades at the coal face of Australian business as a social pioneer, storyteller, change agent, management consultant and business owner. His real work is working with business leaders to make stuff happen. Working with the chairman, CEOs, and leadership teams, he focuses on the core questions an organisation must answer to address their potential with integrity. He works with them to address the real issues that stand in their way-prioritisation, accountability, resistance and fear. His work supports leadership teams in creating the future: creating new markets, toppling big players, securing competitive advantage, managing high growth and boosting profitability. In all of this, the issue of innovation is paramount. Ben is a husband, father and grandfather, a student of business and life, a jogger, skier, art collector and ballroom dancer. Over the last decade, he has been exploring social media and its impact on business and the world at large.

Reviews

Ben Kehoe's book Innovation in Australia: Creating Prosperity for Future Generations is a great read. In fact, it is the first book I have read on Australian Innovation. Australia is competing globally, and we need an environment nurtured by all levels of government to position us as a continuing serious player. The alternative option does not bear thinking about.Ben has in simple terms named many of the challenges and problems with the Australian business culture. What Australia needs is leaders (business and political) with foresight and guts - not leaders looking for a comfortable ride sponsored by someone else.Politicians and business leaders need to nurture a purpose and passion for the Australian nation rather than spending time on doing deals with mates and bagging each other. He proposes a number of ideas worth considering including a Prosperity Commission to extend our thinking about the future and a genuine bipartisan National Infrastructure strategy with major multigenerational initiatives announced each election term. It's a good read. I commend it to you.John Wagner, Chairman, Wagner Corporation
(Builder of the first major airport in Australia in 50 years) This book is born of more than 35 years' experience working with organisations that want to do better and to be better. It is unashamedly a practitioner's view - a view from the Australian business trenches, with a focus on what we can and should do to enhance business and elevate national prosperity.Kehoe's is a critical eye. He points to the lessons we have not learned about transformation and change in our approach to business and growing prosperity and worries about the future if these lessons remain unlearned.As he says, in Australia we have a focus on sport and a Commission to help drive our success there; what about a Prosperity Commission? The Productivity Commission has a role to play, but he urges the development of a Prosperity Commission with independence from Government that has a broad ranging brief to identify what is required to create growth and prosperity in a disrupted economic era.Throughout Kehoe's work there are gems of insight and opinion, challenge and an invitation to readers to engage in the debate about how we can all do better and be better - as business, government and as a nation.This is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in business and prosperity, and particularly insightful for practitioners who will receive a glimpse of what a successful career assisting others with organisational transformation and change looks like and what such work can achieve.Professor Sandra Harding AO, Vice Chancellor and President
James Cook University, Australia - Singapore This book should be compulsory reading for anyone interested (and concerned) about what the future holds for our children and grandchildren.--Euan Murdoch, Founder and Managing Director Herron Pharmaceuticals