CEO and Founder of Lateral Economics

Trained in History, Statistics, Law and Economics, Nicholas Gruen is CEO and founder of Lateral Economics and Peach Financial. He is Chairman of

• The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI),
• Online Opinion and
• Kaggle, an online community crowdsourcing predictive analytics.

He is a board member of Sustainability Victoria and Patron of the Australian Digital Alliance. He has taught in schools, at ANU and Melbourne University and has been a cartoonist.  He is a prolific blogger, essayist and columnist, most recently for the Australian Financial Review and has been published in Best Australian Essays and Best Political Writing.  He has published in international academic journals on a variety of topics and is a prolific blogger at a group blog Club Troppo.

Dr Gruen was a member of the Cutler Review into Australian Innovation leading the Review’s deliberations on the importance improving

information flows, innovation in government and improving the design of tax concessions for R&D and in 2010 he was the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Thinker in Residence.

Lateral Economics has been involved with the Commonwealth, Victorian, South Australian, NSW and Western Australian governments to improve innovation in government and with the World Bank on better regulation.

In 2009 Dr Gruen chaired the Federal Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce producing a report which garnered high praise from leading international figures. The Federal Government has essentially accepted its recommendations.

Since the Taskforce Dr Gruen has spoken on Government 2.0 in every Australian State and on three continents. He is recognised as a strong public advocate for economic reform, innovation and open government all in the context of grasping the extraordinary opportunities which burgeon online.

Australian public policy commentator

Tim is an Australian public policy commentator. His areas of policy expertise include trade, intellectual property, investment, innovation and climate change policy. His most significant contributions to public debate are in intellectual property as an incentive for development of pharmaceuticals and low-carbon technology, the parallel importation of copyrighted works and social policy.

He regularly attends and commentates on major international meetings and multilateral institutions including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Trade Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

He is regularly published in Australian and international newspapers and journals, including the Wall Street Journal, Australian Financial Review and The Australian. He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including as panellist on ABC1’s current affairs program Q&A and Triple J’s radio program Hack.

In 2009 he was recognised by Australia’s national daily broadsheet, The Australian, as one of the ten emerging leaders of Australian society.

Tim currently serves as Director of the Intellectual Property and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs – the world’s oldest free market think tank. Tim is also a Senior Associate at communication firm, SDA Strategic. He is a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s IP Industry Consultative Group, and Associate for IP and Development at the Australian APEC Study Centre.

Tim has completed a Masters of Diplomacy and Trade majoring in International Trade from the Monash Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Public Policy and Politics from Monash University. He has also completed a Diploma of Business and the IP Summer School at the World Intellectual Property Organization Academy. He has also completed the Global Health Diplomacy Executive Program and the WTO, International Trade and Development Program at the Institut de Hautes Études Internationales et du Développment, Geneva. He is also a trained carbon accountant.