Chief Executive Officer & President, Cochlear Limited
BE(Hons) (UNSW), MBA (Macq), PhD (UNSW), HonDSc (Macq), HonDSc (UNSW), FTSE, FAICD, FIEAust

Chris Roberts addressed graduates from the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology in the Great Hall, University of Technology, Sydney on Thursday 9 May 2013, 5.30pm.

Our speaker today is Dr Chris Roberts.

Chris has over 37 years of experience in international medical device businesses.

Chris was a Founding Director of ResMed Inc and from 1992 served as ResMed’s Executive Vice-President, until he became Chief Executive Officer of Cochlear Limited in 2004. Cochlear Limited is the market leader in implantable devices for the hearing impaired with over 95% of Cochlear’s sales being outside Australia.

He was previously the Chairman from 2004 to 2010 and Director up until 2012 at Research Australia, a non-profit organisation promoting the importance of health and medical research.

Chris is a member of The New South Wales Innovation and Productivity Council, the University of New South Wales Faculty of Medicine Advisory Council, Macquarie University Foundation Board of Patrons and the University of Technology Sydney Vice-Chancellor’s Industrial Advisory Board.

Chris holds a Masters in Business Administration from Macquarie University and a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering with Honours and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of New South Wales. He has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science from both Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales.

It gives me great pleasure to invite Dr Chris Roberts to deliver the occasional address.

Speech

Pro-Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Faculty Dean, members of the university, distinguished guests, graduates, families and friends. As is customary on these ceremonial occasions, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land.

It gives me great pleasure to offer words of congratulations to those of you Graduating today. Actually, I wish to congratulate you on three aspects of today’s achievement; For completing your university degree, for choosing to study at the University of Technology, Sydney, and for studying in arguably the most important faculty at UTS, the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology

It certainly is a significant milestone in your lifes' journey to complete a tertiary qualification. Today, all that sweat, hard work, and self-discipline seems worth it, doesn’t it? Congratulations are especially due for those of you receiving higher awards, particularly the students receiving PhD’s today. Well done.

Importantly, congratulations to the parents and families of those graduating today. Without your support, both financial and emotional, as well as your efforts in inculcating character, values and persistence with your children, the outcome might have been very different. To those graduating today, do underestimate the contribution your family and loved ones have made to your success. Well done for completing your degree.

Congratulations also for studying at the University of Technology, Sydney. There are lots of reasons UTS is an excellent University, but I would like to elaborate on why the “technology” is important.

Technology is important because technology, and technological innovation, are the turbochargers of economic growth, and the basis of so much wealth creation occurring in the world today. It is technology that restructures' markets and it is technology which underpins the growth of a company, or a country.

I am puzzled as to why society underestimates the importance of technology as a driver of economic growth, progress and change. Technologic applications of scientific knowledge have rescued billions from poverty, ignorance, fear and an early grave. It is technology that is driving the rapid pace of world change. This is not just true of today, but it has been this way for a long time.

Human prosperity has developed over many thousands of years, driven by two factors: the ability to specialise in doing something well, and the opportunity to trade, or exchange, that for mutual gain.

By exchange, humans discovered the ‘division of labour’ for mutual gain and specialisation encouraged innovation, for example, by encouraging investment in tool-making. It has been technology that has truly powered mans prosperity. It may sound simplistic that our prosperity has evolved simply by embracing specialisation and exchange, but what makes this so powerful is that so many people misunderstand it, and hence fight it.

The history of human prosperity is also the history of human attempts to constrain prosperity as it evolves, because evolution is also about change. There is no shortage of groups which over the years have sought to slow implementation of innovation, and hence growth in prosperity. Many people have no idea how society creates value, or if they do, believe it is a zero sum game where you win at someone else’s expense.

The pace of growth in prosperity accelerated over the past four hundred plus years by advances in science, paralleled by advances in technology. If one considers science as knowledge and technology as application of knowledge it is easy to think of a linear model, where science leads to technology. The truth is very different. The history of Western science teaches us that technology often precedes the science. This is because you can build things by experimentation and trial and error.

Technology truly is key. Be proud that you have studied at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Our future is tied to a critical mass of people understanding this, a critical mass of people with receptors of understanding of science and technology operating throughout society. The first step in understanding science and technology is of course a solid formal education in the area. This is what you have completed. Do underestimate the importance of that solid grounding in engineering, and do be frightened to apply what you have learnt.

From my own experience, I also see engineering as one of the best disciplines for building a business, because it is one of the very few disciplines that teach design, and building a business is an exercise in design. You can analyse the past all you like, but you design the future.

For example, I am the CEO of Cochlear Limited, manufacturers of the cochlear implant for restoring hearing in babies, children, adults and seniors. It is a spectacularly successful intervention, but even after 30 years of building cochlear implants we are spending 15% of our sales on research and development. That gives you some perspective on our commitment to changing the world of the hearing impaired through technological innovation. We employ hundreds of engineers and work with over 100 universities globally.

In summary, as well as being proud of your achievements today, you should also be proud of the University you chose for your studies and the faculty in which you chose to study: Engineering and Information Technology.

Let me challenge you by going a step further: Use your status as UTS alumni as a strategic tool as you build your career and life.

Use the friends and networks you have formed here, stay in contact with each other, and help each other. You can achieve so much more in life by seeing the bigger picture and working together.

Use UTS as a resource for ongoing learning and recognise the opportunity that links with the university can provide. Keep abreast of the developments on campus and maintain strong ties here, you will not be disappointed.

Congratulations to you all. I wish you all much success.