Batterham and Algie began their paper on: `The role of
technology in the minerals industry' (1995) by noting that while:
it is often stated that innovation is central to the economic survival of mining and minerals
processing in the face of global competition, .. .
technology is often far from a core strategy in our
industry. This point is correct. Throughout the world, as a broad
generalisation, mining companies do not value technology
development as a principal means of gaining competitive
advantage. It is important to understand why this is the case.
Batterham and Algie address this question by making distinctions
between innovation, technology and research. They note that
while: all successful (mining) companies are good at
innovation . . . that innovation can proceed
without any research and development and that it
is innovation that generates the competitive
advantage, not research and development per se. In this paper we accept these arguments. However, our focus is
somewhat different. Whereas Batterham and Algie took a mining
company's perspective on the technologies of mining and
processing, we take a broader view of the opportunities for
technology development for company Australia but, in order to
focus the argument, we restrict our discussion to the area of
mining (rather than processing); we focus particularly on mining
systems and mining equipment. We begin by looking at the motivation of companies operating
in any industrial sector to invest in research and development.
Figure 1 recognises four levels of industrial maturity. For
companies in the embryonic and growth stages R&D often is
essential to initiating and developing the business. Mining, on
the other hand, is a mature industry. In mature industries the
conventional roles for R&D are to reduce costs, to extend product
differentiation, or to develop new technology with the aim of
rejuvenating the business. Next we ask whether these general-industry arguments apply to
the mining industry. If they do then the mining industry should
value R&D more highly; after all cost reductions and business
rejuvenation are goals that are worth achieving. On the other
hand if, for whatever reason, these general arguments do not
apply to mining then this may lead the mining industry to invest
only modestly, or not at all, in R&D. In this event, while this
may be a rational decision for the mining industry, it may not be
in the best interest of a nation like Australia where revenues from
the sale of mineral products represent an important part of the
country's economy.