Australia is suffering from a systemic fear of failure that is stifling the growth of innovative new ideas.
That's according to Professor Brian Schmidt, one of the country's Nobel Prize winners.
He won the international accolade for physics in 2011 for his work on the acceleration rate of the universe.
Now, the lauded astronomer has set his sights on Australia's research horizons.
But he's worried they're at risk of shrinking because we're too afraid of taking chances.
"The problem we have is an almost complete aversion to failure in this country," Prof Schmidt told AAP.
"(But) trying to guess in advance where highly innovative things are going to occur is almost impossible."
That's why we've got to invest in all forms and accept the risk of the unknown, he says.
Speaking at the Clunies Ross Awards dinner in Brisbane, he proposed a partial solution: a "national innovation agency" to cut across different government departments and ensure a big picture approach.
It's all a matter of encouraging bolder investments in the country's relatively conservative economy, he told an audience of Australia's leading innovators.
"We have a culture where people go to uni and stay put and do what they're doing," he said.
It's a status quo he, too, could've followed in the early stages of his own career.
Instead, Prof Schmidt says he opted to chase a single, big project and leave the obligatory report writing for later.
A Nobel Prize later, the risk paid off - and now it's just a matter of helping others do the same.
"We need the upside risks of being innovative to outweigh the downside risks," he says.
"Because failure is the heart of innovation."
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