Productivity Reform Will Fail Without Rethinking Corporate Decision-Making
Canva is now worth more than Telstra. The productivity debate keeps ignoring the thing that explains why.
A private company, barely over a decade old, is now worth more than one of Australia’s most iconic listed giants.
Canva overtaking Telstra is not just a market story. It shows how new ways of running companies - with faster incentives and bolder decision making - are outpacing the old guard. That has big implications for Australia’s productivity debate. It’s also a wake-up call for investors.
We are entering a new cycle, one where the next generation of wealth creation will not come from the usual names. It will not be delivered by the incumbent megacaps. It will come from unlisted and underfollowed founders who see opportunity where others see risk.
That distinction matters. Most people are not wired to spot opportunity early. Human nature tends to overestimate risk and underestimate upside. It’s comes from redundant wiring from our evolutionary past, when staying in the cave was safer than venturing out.
Incentives Matter
The real difference begins with incentives. Founders are rewarded over long horizons, while professional CEOs are salaried executives with near certain bonuses. According to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, 91 per cent of Australia’s top CEOs received a performance bonus last year, usually vesting over just three years. It is little wonder decision making becomes short term. When incentives are short term, productivity inevitably suffers. Capital is allocated to quick wins, not to the long horizon investments that build national competitiveness.
Founders, by contrast, are incentivised to build businesses that last decades. Their payoff may be distant, but it is potentially enormous. That dynamic drives a radically different style of decision making. Founder-led firms can act boldly when the opportunity is right, often against convention. They run leaner organisations, stretch capital further, and adapt more quickly. This speed and conviction are what allow companies like Canva to eclipse traditional industry leaders in such a short time.
The Next Wave
Australia’s new founder class are quietly building scalable, capital
efficient businesses that solve problems in ways incumbents cannot. They
aren’t weighed down by bureaucracy and layers of middle management. The
choices they make remain under-the-radar to mainstream investors, who
often underestimate how much corporate decision-making drives stock
prices over the long-term.
This matters for national productivity as much as it does for investors.
Large corporates often struggle to convert capital into output because
decision-making is slow and layered. Founder-led firms, by contrast,
tend to achieve more with less. They streamline operations, redeploy
capital quickly, and build cultures that reward initiative. That ability
to turn resources into outcomes more efficiently is exactly what the
productivity debate is about, yet it is rarely discussed in the context
of how companies are structured and run.
A Hidden Universe
This shift is already evident across a spectrum of Australian businesses, listed, private, and mature firms still carrying founder DNA. This pattern can be seen from Objective Corporation in government software, Hansen Technologies in digital infrastructure systems, and Macquarie Telecom in cloud and data infrastructure, through to private firms like Expert360 and Lakeba, and mature players such as TechnologyOne that still carry founder DNA. These examples are not investment calls, but illustrations of a common pattern: founder ownership, lean structures, strategic patience, and long-term alignment.
Finding The Next Champions
Not all will succeed. Some will stall, others may stay niche, and a few will fail. But together they represent a shift away from empire building and back toward durable, compounding value.
For investors, now is the time to pay attention. By the time these businesses hit broker coverage lists or index products, the edge is gone. Outsized returns from founder led companies come not just from holding them, but from seeing them before the crowd does.
That requires discipline. We must reject size as a proxy for safety. We must fight our bias for comfort and familiarity. And we must study the traits of founder decision making: capital discipline, scalable structures, and long-term alignment.
If productivity reform is truly the national priority, then we must recognise that it will not come from more policy papers or incremental corporate tweaks. It will come from leaders who make decisions differently. Canva will not be the last to redraw the map of corporate Australia. The next champions are already quietly building momentum, and the investors and policymakers who win will be those willing to look earlier, think longer, and back the people who build differently.
