Nicholas John Gruen (1957-) in Australia is a prominent Australian economist and commentator on Web 2.0 and the CEO of Lateral Economics and Chairman of Peach Financial, the Australian Centre for Social Innovation and Online Opinion. He was a founding chairman of Kaggle and is also a board member of Innovation Australia and Sustainability Victoria.
Contents |
Gruen has a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Arts with first class honours from the Australian National University in Canberra. In 1989 he received a Graduate Diploma in Economics and Finance and in 1996 a PhD both from the Australian National University.
Gruen worked as adviser to Senator and Federal Industry Minister John Button from in the early 1980s and in this time played a major role in the development of the Button car plan, which refined the path by which a complex industry plan was deregulated and tariffs were reduced. From 1990 to 1993 economic adviser to Treasurer John Dawkins and then was appointed to the Productivity Commission for one year in 1993 and for five years in 1994. In 1997 he joined the Business Council of Australia where he remained until 2000 when he founded and became CEO of two firms, economic consultancy Lateral Economics and the innovative business model of a finance broker that rebates part of its commission to borrowers Peach Home Loans. In this period he has advised Federal and State Governments as a consultant and on various government appointed committees. In 2008 Gruen became a board member of Sustainability Victoria. In 2011 he was appointed to the board of Innovation Australia.
Gruen has become prominent in public economic discussion. He had a weekly economic column for the Courier Mail and later wrote regularly for the Australian Financial Review. Other media activities include filling in for Ross Gittins' column in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age[1] by Gittins' request and appearing on the radio station Triple J.[2] He has also is a regular contributor to the popular blog Club Troppo and is an author on On Line Opinion. He has held visiting fellowships at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University.
He has mounted the public case for a range of reforms including
He was a member of the Federal Government's Review of the Australian Innovation System in 2008 and chaired the Government 2.0 Taskforce for the Australian Government.[3] The Government has subsequently accepted all of the major recommendations of the Taskforce.
Gruen was also one of the early investors into Kaggle (a Melbourne based data analytics company founded in 2010). He served Kaggle’s first chairman.[4]
Gruen is the son of prominent Australian economist Fred Gruen and the brother of Federal Treasury official David Gruen.