Over the past decade, we’ve seen the slow decline of our mining and traditional manufacturing sectors.  No longer a blue collar town, Wollongong’s smoke stacks have been steadily disappearing.  In their place, we have small bars and creative retail hubs such as Globe Lane.

We have a world class centre of higher education in the University of Wollongong, which is nurturing the next generation of business leaders.

But while we’re taking solid steps on our way toward diversification, we still need more action to grow the jobs and businesses that will help the Illawarra secure its place as a regional economic powerhouse.

Right now, the proportion of businesses and jobs involved in professional services in the Illawarra is more than 25 per cent behind the rest of New South Wales. What this means is that we have fewer businesses and fewer workers in highly skilled fields such as accounting, advanced manufacturing, market research and information technology. 

The kinds of jobs that attract investment. The jobs of the future.

This is a huge risk to our future competitiveness. It’s also an immense opportunity.

Just bringing our share of the professional services sector up to parity with the rest of NSW would mean another 300 businesses and 3000 jobs for our region. 

That’s why we commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to investigate how we can harness the opportunity to grow professional services in the Illawarra and secure the investment, innovation and advanced skills that a bigger knowledge sector would bring to our region.

The Knowledge Future: Supercharging Illawarra’s Professional Services report provides a clear roadmap to maximise the potential of our professional services firms to enter new markets, create jobs and put the Illawarra on the map as a centre for highly skilled, innovative business.

Over the next year, the Illawarra Business Chamber will work with business and government to deliver this report. 

We know that growth in our tourism sector will also support growth in our professional services.  One of our top priorities is to position Wollongong as a premier location for knowledge sector businesses.

We also need to be promoting some of the key advantages of our region such as our very cost competitive operating conditions.  Our office rents are approximately half those of the Sydney CBD – compelling numbers for businesses looking to establish a new home.

Perhaps even more importantly, we need to see Government set real timeframes and investment in projects like the F6 extension and enabling a 60 minute commute from Wollongong to Sydney.

As the chamber highlighted in our 2014 report, Linking the Illawarra, improving the region’s connectivity with Sydney - and in particular Western Sydney - through transport is a critical priority. These links will be absolutely vital if we are to help Illawarra firms connect with clients and attract and retain the highly skilled workers our professional services businesses need to compete.

Now is the time to translate our region’s strengths into the highly skilled jobs and businesses of the future.

The opportunity to secure our place in the knowledge economy is too good to miss.

Debra Murphy is Chief Executive Officer of the Illawarra Business Chamber, a regional division of the NSW Business Chamber.