Going global, with purpose: How focused international connections deliver local growth
Walk into an advanced-manufacturing plant in Adelaide, a med-tech accelerator session in Brisbane, or a gathering of NSW agrifood exporters and you’ll hear the same refrain: our customers, investors and collaborators are already overseas. Whether you work at a city council, a regional development agency or an industry peak body, the real question isn’t if you engage globally - it’s where you focus your effort.
Choose, don’t chase
Australia regularly suffers outbreaks of trade-mission syndrome: delegations sprinting through half a dozen markets with no follow-up plan. Private companies can’t afford that scatter-gun approach, and nor should the public bodies that support them.
A sharper illustration comes from Queensland’s beef exporters. In September 2023, Austrade ran a single-country roadshow across Vietnam, capped by the Taste the Wonders of Australia gala in Ho Chi Minh City. By the end of that year Vietnam had climbed to Australia’s fourth-largest agricultural export market, with shipments jumping from $3.4 billion to $5.2 billion in just twelve months. The lesson is that one well-chosen market, deeply worked, can outperform a dozen cursory stops.
The same discipline sits at the heart of the City of Melbourne’s International Engagement Framework, which I helped to develop. Seven priority areas now filter every partnership and mission, keeping resources trained on the opportunities most likely to pay off.
Government opens doors, business signs deals
In much of Asia a handshake between mayors or ministers still opens doors that cold calls won’t. Adelaide’s 40+ year sister-city relationship with Himeji underpins student exchanges, tourism projects and recurring business missions that firms then convert into deals. Public actors create the initial access; companies have to follow through and secure agreements.
Knowledge sectors are born global
Software, biotech, digital games and clean-energy ventures reach domestic limits quickly, so the most effective support focuses on three things:
Investment readiness – pitch confidently to Singaporean or US investors
Market validation – pilots with overseas anchor customers
Talent flow – recruit through clear visa and relocation pathways.
Innovation precincts and hubs provide useful physical anchors, but pairing them with these targeted programs turns bricks-and-mortar into measurable outcomes.
Align culture with commerce
Cultural narratives can accelerate market entry. Tasmanian whisky makers ride the island’s clean-and-green story to premiumise bottles in Japan and beyond; recent export deals show how effectively that brand converts curiosity into sales. Done well, festivals, sports exchanges and creative-industry tie-ins are soft-power assets that make later business conversations easier.
Diaspora and students: hidden champions
Australia’s diaspora communities remain a vastly under-used resource. Indian-Australian tech leaders in Melbourne, for example, routinely broker introductions back into Bengaluru’s SaaS scene long before agencies get involved. Structured advisory panels and co-designed trade visits are simple ways to harness that advantage. South Australia’s Think Asia network is already trialling this approach.
International students deserve similar attention. In the year to December 2024, visitors whose main purpose was education numbered 486,000 and spent $11.6 billion, while 2.6 million people travelled to see friends and relatives, spending another $5 billion. Those flows bolster tourism and often seed future investment and talent links too.
Learn fast, borrow shamelessly
Join an OECD Local Development Forum workshop, a C40 climate cohort or a World Economic Forum urban-transformation session and you’ll meet peers grappling with the same issues – often with practical solutions ready to adapt. The trick is disciplined follow-through: pilot an idea, measure it, then share the results.
Focused international engagement isn’t rocket science, but it demands rigour: narrow the target list, define clear public-and-private roles, and track the metrics that matter – jobs created, export dollars earned, investment landed. Do that and the payoff is real: deeper supply chains, higher-value jobs and a more resilient economy.
International engagement isn’t a bolt-on to economic strategy; it is economic strategy. Every place or industry that wants sustained growth must treat global relationships as essential elements - right alongside infrastructure, networks and skilled people.
Thinking about how your place or industry cluster could sharpen its global focus? At Econovation, this is one of the areas we care most deeply about. We’ve seen what’s possible when places and industries bring a strategic focus to international engagement. Contact Andrew Wear (andrew.wear@econovation.com.au) for a discussion on how Econovation might be able to help.