With the iAccelerate building due for completion at the Wollongong Innovation Campus in May a presentation by Mark Bouris at Illawarra Women in Business (IWIB) on Friday could not have been better timed.
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Mr Bouris said while Wollongong had a traditional industry background it was a city on the move with enormous potential as a centre of innovation that was ideally located to become Australia’s Silicon Valley.
As the founder and chairman of Wizard Home Loans (before he sold it to GE Money) and then founder and chairman of Yellow Brick Road his opinion is well respected.
Many of the 450 people in the room at the Novotel Wollongong Northbeach on Friday also know Mr Bouris as host of The Celebrity Apprentice Australia. He was applauded from the very start of his presentation when he took off his jacket and spoke of what he saw as Wollongong’s enormous potential.
Mr Bouris admitted he did not come to Wollongong often enough but said his previous visit left him with a very good impression of the city where there was now a branch of Yellow Brick Road run by Justin Bailey. He said coming back on Friday reconfirmed every good thing he thought about the city. He said the city had many great things going for it such as beaches, close proximity to Sydney and its major airport..and was not expensive in a relative sense commercially and residentially. He said it definitely was a city of innovation and that was important.
“You have got all the infrastructure you need to run a business so why wouldn’t Wollongong become the Silicon Valley of Australia..I mean it,” he said.
Mr Bouris said his view sat perfectly with what the government was trying to do in establishing Australia as a country where innovation was nurtured, looked after and built upon.
“This country, and particularly your town, cannot exist on the back of a commodity like steel, or coal, or iron ore which have all been great. What we have to have is very sustainable. And sustainability will come about by virtually having something that is not part of a price cycle..affected by demand and supply. Innovation is about creating small businesses...and turning small businesses into a Google, or a Microsoft, or something like that. Small business will sustain economies and that is what we need to do. And I reckon this is the perfect place to do it.”
Mr Bouris was also impressed with how professional the Novotel and its staff were and how well organised the networking lunch was. And he was very impressed with IWIB saying “you have a great organisation here Glenda (Papac)”.