INNOVATE!

Transforming New Zealand’s Technology based Economy by Richard Bentley

Innovate! presents a review of the state of our manufactured exports sector and how our science and innovation system supports its development. The main conclusions are that our advanced manufacturers are facing turbulent markets, challenging technology developments and the emergence of large companies willing to tackle the niche markets that they are supplying. Further, New Zealand is falling behind in sectors where we should be expecting to making better inroads into international markets.

To address these issues requires a step change in the operation of the science and innovation system. The government needs to make it easier for businesses to access to our extensive university based science and technology capability, and to make more effort to assist key export sectors create long term competitive advantages and to develop more coordinated export strategies.

Innovate! was published by Steele Roberts, 2017, was launched on 15 August 2017 in Wellington. Innovate! is available online and in most bookshops at $34.95. Alternatively copies can be obtained by contacting me at richardj.bentley@xtra.co.nz or texting me at 0274 485 900. Copies can also be obtained from the publisher, Steele Roberts Aotearoa, PO Box 9321, Wellington 6141, or phone 04 384 4222. A full summary of the book can be found here.

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“Essential reading if you’ve ever wondered why New Zealand produces so few successful export-driven science and technology companies — and what we need to do about it.” —

Harry Mills, author of Zero Resistance and The Rainmaker’s Toolkit

Innovate! Origins

The book has its origins in Sir Paul Callaghan’s Wool to Weta where he proposed that New Zealand needed to develop our technology-based economy to avoid slipping further toward a low wage economy. Around the same time, the insightful report Powering Innovation, which I was involved in, revealed the numerous deficiencies in the science and innovation system, and proposed a number of improvements including the idea that the innovation system needed more independent governance.

During my period in MBIE I tried, without any success, to interest government in a sector-based approach to economic planning and development as a means to at least understand why the growth of the technology-based economy was so stilted, to identify where long-term wealth creation was most likely, and to build arguments that might justify targeted government support. More recently, with the Centre for Advanced Engineering, I ran a series of CEO workshops that assisted crystallise the issues. The book brings together a significant body of commentary from sector specialists and observers, develops a rationale for how New Zealand has arrived at the current situation, and proposes the changes that now appear desirable.

The book refers to a number of Centre for Advanced Engineering (CAE) Newsletter articles. These can be accessed from the links below: