Supporters of Australia becoming a start-up nation must have experienced a surge of optimism as youthful politician Wyatt Roy walked side by side with Malcolm Turnbull on his way to the party-room vote meeting that anointed Turnbull the country's 29th Prime Minister.
Roy, 24, is emerging as a champion for entrepreneurship. A trip to Israel in   December last year enlivened him to the multiple benefits of having a co-ordinated policy approach to innovation. He is a passionate believer in the power of entrepreneurs to transform the economy, particularly in information technology and telecommunications. 
During his time in Israel, Roy visited many Israeli start-ups, spoke to rising entrepreneurs and made several visits to Israel's powerful Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. He later wrote a white paper for policy reform and distributed it to cabinet ministers and leading figures involved in science, technology and industry development.
The paper could well land Roy increased responsibility in the coalition government. He would not discuss the cabinet reshuffle with Chanticleer on Friday but he remains willing and eager to make a larger contribution to public policy.
He did provide an overview of his paper on innovation. It focuses on three key areas: how to encourage a more entrepreneurial culture that does not shy away from risk taking, how to attract more capital to Australia for investment in start-ups and how to increase co-operation between higher education, government funded research agencies and the private sector.
Roy's prescription for success is heavily influenced by his Israeli experiences. He says we should follow their lead and centralise all government spending on commercialisation and distribution of seed funding.
In Israel, about $400 million a year is disbursed through 70 separate funding pools which are all administered by the Chief Scientist, Avi Hasson, who serves a six-year term. Roy says Hasson is visiting Australia later this year.
If Australia were to adopt the Israeli model for commercialisation funding it could be channelled through the CSIRO, Roy says. Roy is leading another delegation of about 30 people to Israel in the first couple of weeks of   November. The delegation is led by himself and the 2012 Young Australian of the Year, Marita Cheng, who is chief executive of 2Mar Robotics.
The broader benefits to the economy from encouraging start-ups was made clear this week with the release of ground-breaking research by the office of the chief economist, Mark Cully, in the Department of Industry and Science.
Cully says the paper, The employment dynamics of Australian entrepreneurship, is unique because for the first time it puts in one place all the data about all businesses over the past decade.
The work, which was done in partnership with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, includes many upbeat and positive conclusions about the country's entrepreneurial culture.
One of the key findings is young firms in Australia contribute disproportionately to net job creation. Although employing a small fraction of the Australian workforce (15 per cent), young, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) generated the largest share of total job creation (40 per cent) in the economy.
Another key finding is that smaller is better when it comes to job creation.
The research found that over the period 2006-2011 about 1.04 million full time equivalent jobs were added to the economy. Start-ups (firms aged 0-2 years) added 1.44 million jobs to the economy whereas older firms (3+ years) shed around 400,000 jobs over the same period. The analysis was done in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which has provided comparative data.
Cully says the data that has been collected and is now held securely within the ABS can be used to find out lots of useful information about Australian business development.
The report found that Australia has relatively healthy entrepreneurship and creative-destruction compared with other OECD countries. "Start-ups occupy a relatively high share of total firms, implying that Australia's firm environment is more dynamic compared to a number of other OECD countries," the report said.
"These results are consistent with other reports that show Australia has relatively high entrepreneurial intentions, a high rate of firm creation and low regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship."
The paper, which was released at a workshop in Canberra on Wednesday has prompted other leading figures in the science, research and commercialisation space to think about the ways of promoting more start-ups.
Tony Peacock, who is chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centres Association, believes the new data will have "a massive policy impact."
"To date, the federal government hasn't done very much for start-ups," he says. "Most government programs concentrate on jobs growth through SMEs or productivity improvements through big companies, with only small programs supporting entrepreneurship and start-ups. This data would suggest that more support would be warranted for start-ups along the lines of the SBIR and STTR program in the United States."
Peacock says these US programs made 6200 seed-stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. "The SBIR/STTR program represents a critical source of seed funding for U.S. start-ups that don't fit whatever's hot in venture capital," he says. "In fact, half of all seed stages in tech companies in the U.S. were funded by the SBIR program."
The paper released by Cully found emphasised the importance of innovation in small firms and the way in which more mature companies are less willing to invest in technology.
"Innovators are significantly more likely to invest in physical capital, indicating in part the building of new productive capabilities through technology adoption such as ICT," the paper said. "The data presented in this paper shows high growth start-ups dramatically increase their capital expenditure, indicating in part the building of new productive capabilities through technology adoption such as ICT.
"Among innovative firms, young and small firms can have higher innovation intensities than mature firms as measured by the ratio of research and development spending to sales.
"Our own ongoing research gives compelling evidence that innovation capability underpins the observed firm employment dynamics thereby influencing productivity and employment outcomes in the Australian economy."
Twitter: @TonyBoydAFR
Tony.boyd@afr.com.au