Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen

Australia

Nicholas Gruen is a policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator on our economy, society and innovation. He is CEO of Lateral Economics, Visiting/Adjunct Professor at Kings College London Policy Institute and Adjunct Professor at UTS Business School. In the 1980s he was a school teacher and a cartoonist.

He is Patron of the Australian Digital Alliance, comprising Australia’s libraries, universities, and digital infrastructure providers such as Google and Yahoo. 

He was chair of the Open Knowledge Foundation (Australia) (2015-2020), a Council Member of the National Library of Australia (2014-16), chaired the Federal Government’s Innovation Australia (2013-14) and chaired The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) (2010-16).

He is a shareholder in a number of start-ups in Australia and internationally, and was the founding chair of Kaggle which was recently sold to Google.

He has advised Cabinet Ministers, sat on Australia’s Productivity Commission and founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial in 2000. He’s had regular columns in the Courier Mail, the Australian Financial Review, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and has published numerous essays on political, economic and cultural matters. 

He was on the Cutler Review into Australia’s Innovation System in 2008, and the review of Pharmaceutical patent extensions in 2013. 

In 2009 he chaired Australia’s internationally acclaimed Government 2.0 Taskforce.

He has a BA (Hons - First Class) in History (1981) a Graduate Diploma in economics and a PhD from the ANU (1998), and an LLB (Hons) from the University of Melbourne (1982).