Brennan Turns Internal Innovation Engine into new Managed Capability for Business to Improve Productivity

Australian businesses risk mistaking AI adoption for innovation, with the technology alone unlikely to deliver the productivity improvements the economy needs, according to Australian technology company Brennan.

Founder and Managing Director of Brennan, Dave Stevens, said the bigger challenge for organisations was not a shortage of ideas or access to new technology, but the absence of a consistent, disciplined and efficient way to identify, test, deploy and scale worthwhile innovations.

“Businesses have established systems to manage finance, people and customer service, but innovation is often treated in an ad-hoc way, relying on unstructured emails, spreadsheets, disconnected teams, and one-off pilot programs,” Mr Stevens said. 

“There is no shortage of innovative ideas coming from staff and customers, but what businesses lack is a visible and governed way to determine which of them will support the business strategy, deliver value and are worthy of investment.”

ABS data shows fewer than half of Australian businesses are ‘innovation-active’, highlighting the gap between having access to new technologies and systematically turning them into better products, services and ways of working.

To address the gap, Brennan has launched the Brennan Innovation Foundry, a new managed innovation capability designed to help organisations transform business problems and ideas into practical and measurable outcomes.

The Brennan Innovation Foundry combines structured idea capture and assessment to help organisations prioritise opportunities against strategic value, expected return and effort, with reusable AI skills and rapid prototyping.

Leadership retains visibility across the entire innovation pipeline, including what is being explored, what is progressing and where value is being created, supported by in-platform reporting for governance and observability.

“The Brennan Innovation Foundry gives an organisation a cohesive governed way to manage innovation across the whole business faster and more cost effectively than ever possible before,” Mr Stevens said.

“It captures ideas wherever they arise, allows leadership to assess them against strategic priorities and measurable outcomes, and helps turn the strongest into working solutions.

“The objective is not to pursue every idea. It is to test ideas earlier, stop those that do not demonstrate sufficient value and invest with greater confidence in those that do.”

The launch of the Brennan Innovation Foundry follows from the success of an internal rollout which has generated more innovation in the business in the past six months than the previous three years.

Since April, the Foundry has received and assessed more than 230 ideas, of which 30 have been developed into delivered outcomes, including new applications, AI agents, workflow automations, platform integrations, operational dashboards and security and compliance solutions.

One of these is the Brennan Skills Marketplace that houses more than 30 AI skills, workflows and automation patterns that can be reused to reduce duplicated development work, accelerate innovation and increase returns on innovation investment. 

Mr Stevens said to date, outputs from the Foundry had “been frankly, staggering”.

“We now have access to dozens of business systems and features that we didn’t previously, and they’re all completely customised to our needs and growing by the day,” Mr Stevens said.

“It demonstrated what could be achieved when innovation was treated as an ongoing business discipline rather than a series of isolated projects.

“One example of how this approach enhanced productivity in our business is the automation of the vulnerability-assessment process, which is saving up to five hours of manual engineering work per incident and enabling teams to respond to security issues faster.

“This is what practical innovation should deliver - less time spent on repetitive work, faster action and a better outcome for our clients.”

Mr Stevens said the Brennan Innovation Foundry was only launched to customers after the approach was methodically tested internally and proven to work, as “customers wanted and deserved partners that have done the work on themselves before pitching a vision to them.” 

“We have always regarded Brennan as an innovative company, but we found that innovation became harder to sustain as the organisation grew and day-to-day priorities took over,” Mr Stevens said.

“The Foundry has given us a structured way to surface ideas, test whether they can deliver a meaningful result and make better-informed decisions about where to invest. 

We've rebuilt how we approach innovation, so ideas don't evaporate when the workshop ends, or stall because one person has to force them through the business.

“AI is an extraordinarily powerful enabler of that process. But the objective is not more AI. The objective is better innovation that leads to stronger business performance.”

About Brennan

Brennan, formerly known as Brennan IT, is an Australian-owned and managed technology services company, founded in 1997 on the belief that how technology is delivered is every bit as important as what the technology is. Brennan now serves more than 1,700 business, enterprise and government customers, designing, implementing, and improving Managed IT, Digital Transformation, and Cybersecurity solutions that deliver true performance and create real and relevant value. Brennan consistently earns an 80+ Net Promoter Score for customers and their users and was ranked #10 globally in Cloudtango's 2026 Enterprise Global 100 MSP rankings, the only Australian provider in the top ten. Brennan’s website is brennanit.com.au