Innovation is critical to changing the course of our planet’s rising temperatures. Regulations are one of the tools that government use to shape innovations to both protect people from harm and to enable progression. Often though for those not familiar with the variety of regulations, it appears to be an insurmountable wall to climb to get a project off the ground.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2026 released their thoughts about innovation and how forward-looking policy makers can anticipate change, engage early with complexity to co-create solutions with industry. Whilst the WEF are economic focused, there are a group of powerful ideas which are already resonated by Institutions such as the Australia and New Zealand School of Government.
This paper discusses some of the history of regulatory impacts and the strategies and solutions taken by one regulator to support innovative developments in Queensland, achieving both the proponent’s objectives and the safety objectives.
There are sharable learnings from the experience for innovators on communicating and working cooperatively with regulators to get the best outcomes for society and for their project.