Two years in: what is changing across WA’s innovation ecosystem?

Rather than looking only at how many grants have been awarded, organisations have joined the network or programs have been delivered, we want to understand whether the conditions around innovators and entrepreneurs are actually improving.

Two years of survey data are now starting to give us that picture.

There has also been continued growth in the network and funding activity.

The Meshpoints Partner Network now includes 214 organisations, with 34 joining in 2026. Phase 2 has so far awarded 21 grants worth $395,320, across the first two Meshpoints Challenges, the Open Challenge and IdeaStarter.

That follows Phase 1, which awarded 88 grants worth $2.62 million to 54 organisations. Reporting from those projects recorded more than 19,000 people reached, alongside $1.21 million in matched cash funding and $818,000 in in-kind support.

But activity alone does not tell us whether the ecosystem is getting stronger.

That is where the four outcomes come in.

In 2025, our Phase 1 surveys established a baseline across the four outcomes, with 367 responses from ideators, partners, grantees and the broader ecosystem.

In 2026, 276 people responded across the WA Innovation Ecosystem Survey, New Partner Survey and Partner Survey. The surveys are not identical and the respondents are not the same people, so the changes below should be read as indicators of direction rather than proof of causation.

Across the four outcomes, two improved and two declined:

The headline is not that everything is moving in the same direction. It is that different parts of the ecosystem are moving at different speeds.

The detail inside each outcome tells us more.

People remain confident in their ability to contribute.

Confidence to contribute stayed at 76%, making it one of the strongest measures across the whole framework.

Where we saw movement was in the ecosystem around that confidence. Knowledge sharing fell from 69% to 60%, while the availability of skills needed to progress an idea fell from 65% to 62%.

That distinction is important.

People largely believe they have something to contribute. The challenge is making sure they can find the specialist knowledge, people and practical capability they need to turn that confidence into progress.

The qualitative feedback reinforced this. Respondents repeatedly asked for more practical capability building, particularly around commercialisation, scaling, finance and sector-specific expertise.

For Meshpoints, this points to a shift from creating more opportunities to connect towards making those connections more useful and more specific.

Participation and belonging recorded one of the strongest improvements across the framework.

The biggest movement was in whether WA feels like a welcoming and inclusive ecosystem, which increased from 49% to 74%.

The proportion of respondents who see WA as a viable place to progress an idea also increased substantially, from 48% to 63%.

Cross-sector collaboration remained high at 76%, while connection to the ecosystem remained steady at 65%.

The community itself continues to be one of WA’s most commonly identified strengths.

Another respondent described WA as unusually accessible compared with larger ecosystems, with founders, operators, investors and people willing to help relatively easy to reach.

There is still work to do. Perceptions of the diversity of people and ideas in the ecosystem fell from 71% to 66%.

The qualitative feedback also makes clear that inclusion is not experienced equally. Partners called for greater reach into regional communities and stronger participation from First Nations, CALD, youth and other underrepresented groups.

So while the overall direction is positive, the next question is whether that sense of belonging is being experienced broadly enough across WA.

This outcome recorded the largest overall improvement.

Most notably, perceptions of the quality of WA programs compared with other ecosystems increased from 42% to 73%.

In Phase 1, fewer than half of respondents felt the programs available in WA were comparable with those available elsewhere. In Phase 2, nearly three quarters did.

The proportion who believe programs effectively help advance ideas also increased from 68% to 71%.

But there is an important counterpoint.

The measure of whether programs are building the skills people need fell from 70% to 59%.

That gives us a more nuanced picture than simply saying WA needs more programs.

People are increasingly positive about the quality of the ecosystem’s support infrastructure. At the same time, they are asking whether that infrastructure is building enough practical capability to help people execute, commercialise and scale.

The opportunity may therefore be less about creating additional programs and more about strengthening the pathways between them, improving specialisation and ensuring support matches what innovators need at different stages.

This remains the weakest of the four outcomes.

Access to capital fell from 42% to 39%, the lowest measure across the framework.

Access to mentors and support networks also fell from 67% to 59%.

By comparison, the perceived availability of programs remained almost unchanged, moving from 69% to 68%.

That combination is telling.

The issue is not necessarily a lack of programs. It is access to some of the resources behind them, particularly experienced people, specialist advice and capital.

When respondents were asked directly about barriers, 61% identified capital as a barrier, 45% identified skills and 41% identified advice and mentorship.

Partner feedback on capital also highlighted an important distinction between starting and scaling.

Another partner described good access to grants and angel investors, but a shortage of the markets and later-stage capital required to scale.

This is likely to become an increasingly important challenge as the ecosystem matures.

Supporting people to start is only one part of the pathway. The ecosystem also needs to help its strongest ideas access the people, customers and capital required to grow.

Together, the four outcomes show an ecosystem with clear areas of progress, but also some persistent constraints.

Participation and belonging has strengthened.

Confidence in WA’s supporting structures has strengthened.

At the same time, access to skills, knowledge, mentoring and capital has not kept pace.

The result is an ecosystem where people are increasingly positive about being part of the community and about the quality of the programs around them, but where some of the practical pathways required to turn ideas into growth remain difficult to navigate.

That is useful feedback for Meshpoints because the four outcomes are not simply measures of the ecosystem. They are intended to help determine where collective effort should go next.

We also asked members of the Partner Network specifically about Meshpoints.

The results are mixed, and worth reporting plainly.

78% of partners believe Meshpoints has advanced WA’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, unchanged from Phase 1.

Agreement that Meshpoints is contributing to greater collaboration also remained high at 76%.

And the proportion who believe Meshpoints activities make it more viable to remain in WA increased from 68% to 77%.

Partners consistently described Meshpoints’ strongest contribution as connecting parts of the ecosystem that previously operated separately.

One Partner Network member described Meshpoints as making “previously hidden and closed networks in the ecosystem more open and accessible.” Another described its role as bringing previously siloed organisations together.

But other measures declined.

Agreement that Meshpoints is the right structure to advance the ecosystem fell from 68% to 57%.

The proportion saying their organisation had directly benefited from Meshpoints support fell from 74% to 57%.

And the proportion who described being part of the Partner Network as valuable fell from 71% to 62%.

There is some context. Phase 2 included 23 new partners, some of whom said they had not yet had enough exposure to Meshpoints to assess its impact. Phase 2 has also involved significant changes to the funding model and the transition from the Index to the Navigator.

But the direction of the feedback is still useful.

Partners want Meshpoints to be clearer about the value of the network, reach further beyond its existing audiences, involve founders more directly and create stronger pathways to capital, customers, skills and scale.

The four outcomes give us a clear framework for where to focus next.

The role of Meshpoints is not to solve each of these challenges alone.

It is to help the organisations that make up WA’s ecosystem see where the gaps are, coordinate around them and direct collective effort towards the areas where it can make the biggest difference.

That is why we will continue measuring the same four outcomes over time.

Two years of data gives us a clearer baseline. The next phase is about using it.