Four years after it was unveiled as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda, the CSIRO is preparing to shutter its $20 million entrepreneur-focused science accelerator program known as ON, writes James Riley.
THE FOUR-YEAR funding horizon for ON will draw to a close at the end of the financial year, with the CSIRO preparing to wind up the program at the conclusion of a final Demo Day for its ON Prime and ON Accelerator next May.
The ON program was announced in late 2015 as a part of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s NISA – the Ideas Boom – with its $20 million funding package over four-years from the start of the 2016-17 financial year.
The ON program had been part of a government effort to improve the commercialisation outcomes for publicly funded research, and to boost the numbers of startup companies coming out of institutional research.