Australia is known for its rich natural resources sector and mining economic activity. Despite this, the services sector equates to 62.7% of GDP. Its key trade zone for export is South East Asia, comprising of 64% of its exports.
Australia’s large companies dominate the market including key players such as ANZ, NAB, Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie Group, Telstra, Caltex, BHP, Rio Tinto, Wesfarmers and Woolworths.
Its business sector is large and dispersed with 2.1m business owners, of which 35% are in regional areas and 70% are classified as family businesses. In total SMEs equate to 35% of GDP.
Key sectors are industry, services and infrastructure. Industry includes; mining, manufacturing and agriculture. The key sectors in services include; finance, tourism, media, education and logistics. Infrastructure includes; the energy market.
In 2019, the Advisory Board Centre mapped professionals currently serving on Advisory Boards and the assessment identified that there are over 44,000 professionals on Advisory Boards in Australia. This equates to 3% of the global Advisory Board market.
Advisory Boards are well utilised across all different sizes of business including post accelerator and incubators with business scale ups. The business sector utilises Advisory Boards predominately to support growth (75%). The corporate sector is increasingly utilising project based advisory boards to oversee international business, including Transurban and After Pay, as well as overseeing critical incidents – Australian Government Covid19 response Advisory Board and Australian Red Cross Advisory Board which oversees the funding allocations from the 2020 bushfire response.
With the rise in complexity and risk management for Governance Boards, Advisory Boards will be increasingly utilised to apply critical thinking prior to board approval. The Australian business mid-market Advisory Board sector has a minimum of 3% growth potential to be in line with other nations.
