Mapping NZ’s startup ecosystem – An Aussie beats us to the punch!

Posted on June 18, 2013 by

Have a look at this, and click through the link that goes with it.

You’ll find this Startup Ecosystem Mindmeister map by Phil Morle, fascinating (well probably).

It provides a pretty good overview of everything New Zealand for innovation and new products and services and support and capital and funding and……the lot.

Startup Ecosystem

Now, this screen grab in no way does justice to the totality of what Worle’s created ….. and this creation is in the realm of ‘why didn’t I think of this first’.

I strongly recommend you go here, to the Mindmeister map itself and have a look see and exploration.

This is even more impressive when you realise Worle’s Australian, and CEO behind Pollenizer, a Sydney and Singapore ‘Startup Science’ entity.

Pollenizer’s front page states it is about Growing Entrepreneurs and Building Startups – claiming “5 years. 20 Startups. 3 profitable companies. 60 Mentors. 850 Entrepreneurs. $12m Raised.”

The map also extends and connects to Australia, Singapore and Greater China – though you’d have to think that there’s much more missing from those countries (given the comparative size of the connections) than for Godzone.

Bree Clare from the Pollenizer team made the comment too for others to use and add to the map. “The biggest threat we have in our work is not knowing who to talk to. That’s why we built it,” she says.

Even sticK is included – demonstrating that Worle and his team must really know their stuff!

Posted in China, Development, Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, IT, private equity, Prototyping, SciBlogs, Science, start-up, technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Technology Transfer Vouchers go the way of the dinosaurs

Posted on June 13, 2013 by

Dave Guerin runs a blog and a paid subscription model for Education Insider – essentially an education everything at the tertiary and beyond level.

He keeps a super-close eye on legislation, comings and goings, controversy…..and government budget announcements.

Dave reads the fine print – the following is his delving among the entrails – and makes some excellent observations. (Thanks Dave)

    • We noted Steven Joyce’s changes to business R&D grants in our Budget analysis, but we always meant to come back and look at the details. It was good that we did, because we missed the major change – the abolition of Technology Transfer Vouchers. The Vouchers directed (usually smaller) firms into working with research organisations on projects (accredited partners included 8 universities and 2 ITPs). The Government offered matching funding to firms.
    • The Vouchers did not have a fast or high uptake and seem to have become a casualty of their relative lack of success. They were introduced in the 2010 Budget and the first voucher was announced in December 2010. $5m was to be granted each year for a total of $20m over four years, but by Aug 2012 only $4m had been given out in 39 grants, by which time $11.25m had been budgeted. The original $100,000 requirement from businesses was dropped to $30,000, but uptake has not been sufficient to retain the Vouchers.
    • While the removal of Vouchers is understandable from a Government view, it does remove one of the few initiatives to encourage interaction between small firms and research organisations. The final design of the R&D Project Grants might address that gap (as might Callaghan Innovation’s future facilitation activities), but it seems that an opportunity has been missed, without any immediate alternative.

Key Facts

  • Steven Joyce announced three new business R&D grants on Budget day, saying that they “replace the previous Technology Development Grants, TechNZ Project Grants, TechNZ Capability Grants, and Technology Transfer Vouchers.”
  • Technology Transfer Vouchers will end. We missed the brief reference in Joyce’s media release on Budget day, but we have confirmed the situation with Callaghan Innovation.
  • R&D Growth Grants replaced the previous Technology Development Grant – key changes are noted below.
  • Businesses with a minimum of $300k of R&D spending in NZ, and at least 1.5% of revenue spent on R&D over last 2 years will be eligible (used to be 3% of revenue over past 3 years, plus at least $3m revenues).
  • After two years of funding, businesses can be re-assessed for a further three years funding.
  • The cap on funding per annum will increase to $5 million (was $2.4 million).
  • Most of the subjective judgement associated with receiving a grant has been removed
  • R&D Student Grants are being retained from the previous TechNZ Capability Grants. They will provide support for undergraduate and postgraduate students to work within R&D active businesses. These were part of the previous TechNZ Capability Grants.
  • R&D Project Grants replaced the TechNZ Project Grants – key changes are noted below.
  • Project grants are targeted at firms with smaller R&D programmes and those that are new to R&D.
  • Project grants will typically provide 30-50 per cent public co-funding (was 50%).
  • Project grants will be repayable under certain circumstances – particularly if a business shifts its R&D activity offshore (this is new).

Previous sticK stories about the Tech Transfer Vouchers can be found here, and here.

Posted in Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, Prototyping, SciBlogs, Science policy, start-up, technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Where’s Callaghan Innovation’s business plan……because while we wait nothing happens?

Posted on June 11, 2013 by

Now that Steven Joyce has fixed (or not) the Novopay teachers’ pay debacle, perhaps he’d like to turn his attention back to Callaghan Innovation.

Remember that minister – the commercialisation entity (however loosely you want to define it) created as something new (but based on the bones of the old IRL) where its establishment chair Sue Suckling reported only to you.

The CI establishment also by-passed the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment too you might recall, even though that was the relatively recently formed super-ministry charged with most of the science investment in New Zealand.

The former IRL had a well thought out plan to morph into a three-major-city Advanced Technology Institute model, which, while I’m sure would’ve had teething troubles had the virtue of working on the basis that industry would come to it with actual problems to solve. I bet now you wish you’d let them get on with this.

Just to refresh your memory too Steven, CI kicked off in February this year and was supposed to come up with a business case by the end of June. Which in itself is the cart before the horse in the normal scheme of things (usually businesses have a business plan first) – and something I’m sure you would have never have contemplated in the private sector.

But I guess things are a bit different when it’s taxpayer money and the buck never really stops anywhere.

However, you might like to check out what’s happening at CI.

Rumour has it that there’s an ongoing unresolved debate on whether CI’s focus should be on helping small companies grow through developing their good ideas, or whether helping larger companies expand further by backing research, development and commercialisation of their efforts should be where efforts are directed.

Personally, I can’t see that it is an either/or argument ….. a good idea, no matter where it comes from, that can be scaled quickly is the main objective from our country’s point of view.

That’s how we create wealth.

Because the thing is, while CI fiddles nothing much else happens, just a whole lot of wheelspinning.

I realise too that the 0800 Innovation telephone number was meant to address the huge number of companies and entrepreneurs supposedly frustrated at not being able to talk to the right people at the right time to take their ideas through to a more marketable prototype or product.

But, the reality is, anyone with even half a brain could get hold of the technical smarts required – so that premise, among many, was totally faulty.

All of which is a pity. Firstly, for wrecking something that wasn’t broke, and secondly for not yet replacing it with something, anything.

This is at a time when we, as in NZ Inc, really need to crank up the extent of our innovation, fill its funnel with good ideas and be prepared to fail fast with no-goers and back ones shown to be promising.

So Mr Joyce – if you could just get CI to come up with a business plan, we can then get on with getting on.

It doesn’t need to be complicated; a one-pager is fine, in fact ideal.

All it has to state is what CI is going to do, how it is going to do it, and how we’ll measure the success of its commercialisation efforts.

Quite simple really.

P.S. As I write this, the rumour is that CI isn’t going to present a business plan after all, but instead a statement of intent by the end of June. As we all know, such documents are hardly worth the paper they’re written on.

In the scheme of things, the actual cost and the opportunity cost to our country of such waffle and non-action is a much bigger scandal than Novopay.

Posted in high tech, Innovation, Prototyping, SciBlogs, technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Using and playing in the world of smartphones – a new magical experience

Posted on June 5, 2013 by

Content Note: This post has been enabled by Telecom NZ , but the thoughts are my own. Find out more about the HTC One here, you can find out more about Android on the Telecom Network here. Scoop TechLab is a project of Scoop Independent Media www.scoop.co.nz. It is edited by Scoop Editor Alastair Thompson.

Now, let it be known right from the get-go that I’m relatively uncool when it comes to smart phones and techy-type stuff.

It was only just over a year ago that I bought an Ideos X5 from 2Degrees after losing (and I still don’t know where it ended up) my relatively primitive Nokia (not a smartphone).

I was somewhat relieved to find it was the same phone that number one son had bought – and he’d gone through much more cost/value/benefit(s) calculations than me.

This was a Google Android phone as well – yippee, all my contacts were easily available and updateable.

It was a gradual introduction to what you could do with a smartphone – and its limitations.

So, when I received a HTC One to review, my first thought was wow – this is so much better looking than my present phone.

The number two son went, ‘heck dad, this is one of the top phones of the moment and you don’t even know what to do with it’.

True. In a world of Facebook and Twitter , gaming and watching Youtube, I merely scratch its surface.
But, I certainly look the part with this new phone.

And where it gets it right from the get-go is it looks gorgeous. According to HTC, (and appealing to my inner-craftsman) its rounded and bevelled aluminium back takes 200 minutes to make using CNC and diamond cutters. You can check out this process here by clicking on the video.

What HTC manage to achieve is a phone which though 9.3mmm thick, feels much thinner because it tapers to 4mm at its edges.

It is a phone that invites being touched, handled – like a good tool from that point of view.

I was also reminded (in fact told off), that I shouldn’t and didn’t need to use two hands/thumbs when using this HTC One.

“Look dad, you hold it in this hand, or this hand, and you just scroll,” which said ironically has a certain amusement.

Mind you, he’d also set up a few homescreen sites and apps and what have you on scroll pages which are handy – including a Flashlight.

The fifth scrolling screen has ‘Cut the Rope Time Travel’, Temple Run 2, Iron Man 3, RF13 (Real Football) and Hardest Game Ever 2 I also noticed.

Better have a look at these. Wow – fantastic graphics. Hell, I’d even be tempted to have a go if I can figure out how to pass and shoot. That’s due mostly to it being a 1920 x 1080 pixel screen (really high definition), across a 16:9 ratio. And given that its screen size is 138mm diagonal, compared to the X5’s 93mm, it makes reading emails and the like just that much easier as well.

It made my test of Youtube and U2, and ‘Whose going to ride your wild horses’ pretty special. HTC’s called their at-the-front stereo speakers BoomSound, (a bit too 1980s for me), but an impressively clear and vibrant sound from such a small set up.

It makes the thought of downloading and watching a feature film quite realistic – and something to try over the next couple of weeks.

So, how does it feel to have this HTC One?

Like a really good Christmas present that you forget you have, and then have the pleasure of reacquainting yourself with when it comes out of your pocket.

Magic.

Posted in high tech, Innovation, technology, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Key’s causing of capital introspection is probably good for us

Posted on May 28, 2013 by

As much as Prime Minister John Key has attempted to water down his ‘Wellington is dying’ aside, at the very least it has provided a good opportunity for some capital introspection.

One thing Key might be doing is confusing busyness with business – and on that count with its larger population and vastly improved motorway network, well Auckland’s way ahead.

But looking under the bonnet of commerce, while Wellington can always do better, here’s a few facts John.

(Disclaimer: some of these are pretty hair-splitting in nature, but nevertheless!)

  • Wellington has the most NZ companies in the Deloitte Asia Fast 500 (Wellington 17, Auckland 16)
  • In 2012 Wellington had four new additions to the TIN 100 (Wedgelock, Fraser Engineering, Xero, Catalyst), versus Auckland with three and Christchurch two (Source; TIN 100)
  • Companies based in Wellington generate as much revenue as the entire South Island and have a slightly better revenue per population than Auckland (Source; TIN 100)
  • In 2012 the Wellington region ranked first in the country for business growth (Source: BERL Regional Rankings 2012)
  • Information media and telecommunications was the largest industry in Wellington in 2012, accounting for 9.9% of total GDP. The second largest industry was public administration and safety (9.5%) followed by financial and insurance services (7.6%). (Source: Infometrics, Wellington Region annual economic profile)
  • In 2011/12 the Wellington food and beverage sector grew at almost twice the national rate (growth of 4.2% compared with national growth of 2.1%). (Source: Infometrics, Wellington Region annual economic profile)
  • In 2011/12 Wellington’s screen and digital output grew by 2.2% compared with national growth of 1.2% (Source: Infometrics, Wellington Region annual economic profile)
  • Wellington outperforms all regions on GDP per employee, showing significantly higher output per employee – at $78,719 compared with a weighted average of $64,898. (Source: Infometrics, Wellington Region annual economic profile)
  • In 2012 the Wellington region ranked 4th in the country for resident population growth (Source: BERL Regional Rankings 2012)

And finally – Lonely Planet Best in Travel – 4th best destination worldwide

The main point is, supported by facts, that Wellington’s alive and kicking.

We, as in Wellingtonians and non-Aucklanders should be careful to avoid too much navel-gazing and taking to heart of John Key’s off-the-cuff comments.

We want Auckland to be doing well of course.

We also want the rest of the country to be doing well.

It isn’t an either/or argument. It is an also.

If John Key really wanted to make a useful aside, it would be around the likes of ‘this is what we should be concentrating on to create more wealth for our country’.

But that would mean committing to a course of action; and that as we all know is not a modus operandi for any sort of political party in New Zealand.

Posted in Development, Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, IT, SciBlogs, Science, start-up, university | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Software Patents: the Difference between Excluding Computer Programs as Such and Excluding Computer Programs as Such

Posted on May 23, 2013 by

By guest blogger Doug Calhoun

The Patents Bill has had a tortuous ride through Parliament – to say the least. Introduced in 2008, it was reviewed by a select committee in 2009 and reported back in March 2010. In September 2012, the bill finally got its second reading that featured a heated debate over the exclusion from patent eligibility of “a computer program as such”.

Since then the committee stage (when the “as such” wording would be voted on) has been delayed.

On 9 May the government tabled Supplementary Order Paper 237.

The main change proposed in SOP 237 was to rewrite the September 2012 exclusion in a new Clause 10A. The new clause features 4 sub-clauses that seek to explain how the exclusion is to be interpreted – but the substantive exclusion is still “a computer program as such.”

So it came as a bit of a surprise to read Clare Curran’s description of the change as David conquering Goliath – a win for the 90%+ of New Zealand innovators that she claims to represent. It is a bit difficult to fathom how the exclusion of a computer program “as such” can be condemned so strongly in September and then be a triumph the following May.

But hey, this is politics. And Clare Curran has borrowed a page from the George W. Bush manual of political spin. She didn’t have a bomber jacket, a “Mission Accomplished” banner or an aircraft carrier. So she had to settle for a declaration of victory – never mind the inconvenient details – on her party’s “Red Alert” blog.

Ms Curran’s victory announcement included this slight revision of history:

“Three years ago, the Commerce Select Committee undertook a much needed review of New Zealand’s patent laws which hadn’t been looked at since 1953. A substantial review which considered and recommended modernisation to an important plank of our intellectual property regime ranging from inventions to medicines, traditional knowledge and indigenous plants and animals to software programs.”

The Patents Act 1953 has been under review for half of its life. In 1983 a government appointed committee (the Industrial Property Advisory Committee) began the process. Since then reviews have done by the Law Commission (1989/90), the Ministry of Commerce (1990-1994), and the Ministry of Economic Development (2000-2008). The Patents Bill, in its original form was introduced by a Labour led government in 2008. What happened before Clare Curran became aware of it was seemingly beyond her event horizon.

The policy development had been conducted in a largely non-partisan way through to September 2012, when computer software became a political football and the rest of the Patents Bill and its purpose became largely ignored. The injection of partisan politics into patent policy at this stage is hardly a recipe for success for New Zealand.

According to its explanatory note, the wording of SOP 237 is intended to be

“more consistent with English precedent.”

But one wonders how closely the authors of the change have looked at English precedent.

In the most recent (3 May 2013) UK appeal decision HTC Europe v Apple the English court of Appeal reversed a lower court decision and held an Apple patent claim to be valid. The invention related to the organisation of touch screen devices. The claim reads:

  • “(i) A method for handling touch events at a multi-touch device, comprising:
  • (ii) displaying one or more views;
  • (iii) executing one or more software elements, each software element being associated with a particular view;
  • (iv) associating a multi-touch flag or an exclusive touch flag with each view, said multi-touch flag indicating whether a particular view is allowed to receive multiple simultaneous touches and said exclusive touch flag indicating whether a particular view allows other views to receive touch events while the particular view is receiving a touch event;
  • (v) receiving one or more touches at the one or more views; and
  • (vi) selectively sending one or more touch events, each touch event describing a received touch, to one or more of the software elements associated with one or more views at which a touch was received based on the values of the multi-touch and exclusive touch flags.”

The lower court decision was that this claimed an (ineligible) computer program as such – the appeal court held it did not. The invention claimed was patent eligible.

Lord Justice Lewison, in paragraphs 140 to 144, had a bit of a moan:

“This appeal requires us, once again, to venture into the minefield of the exclusion from patentability of computer programs ‘as such’”

He then went on to explain that the two simple words “as such” found in the European Patent Convention (which governs both UK domestic law and the law applied in the European Patent Office) still have no clear meaning after 35 years of trying. Instead of arguing about what the legislation means, the arguments now are about what the gloss means. And still no one can agree.

SOP 237 sets out to put into law in New Zealand, a New Zealand “gloss” on the gloss that they have been disagreeing about in the English courts and the European Patent Office since 1978.

Clare Curran paints

“the bloated patent attorney sector”

as one of the villains on the side of Goliath in this saga. (Gratuitous insults seem to be as common to political blogs as a bit of biffo is to rugby pitches.)

What her “triumph” has unwittingly done is to open up a fertile new field for the bloated patent attorney sector to venture into over the next few years. And among the most likely innovations will be in defining software-implemented inventions.

Clare Curran might also want to have a look in her own (Dunedin) back yard. A successful University of Otago spinoff company there is Pacific Edge. That company boasts on its website that it underpins its products with a strong portfolio of patents.

One of its New Zealand patents, NZ 544432, claims a method for determining the prognosis of colorectal cancer in a patient using analysis software.

Under the new clause 10A and under clause 15 of the Patents Bill such claims might no longer be eligible for patents because they might claim a computer program per se or else because they might claim a method of diagnosis, or both.

The most valuable asset that Pacific Edge has is its intellectual property. The Patents Bill casts doubt on the patent eligibility of innovative technologies that Pacific Edge is seeking to commercialise.

Is this really going to promote investment in innovation?

Posted in high tech, Innovation, IT, Patent, Prototyping, SciBlogs, sustainability, technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lightning Lab startups ask – ‘where’s the money’?

Posted on May 21, 2013 by

Lightning Lab 2013 saw nine startups pitch their digital products to would-be investors last week, seeking expansion capital for ideas that 12 weeks before mostly existed on paper.

The Wellington Demo Day saw highly polished presentations, with clear development plans and just as clear ‘here’s how we and our investors are going to make money’ to about 300 people at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre. About half the audience were financiers.

Any investment secured goes to the next stage of development and expansion into global markets.

My initial underlying thought was jealousy.

Why? Because the participants have obviously learned so much.

Tui Te Hau, CEO of Wellington startup incubator Creative HQ up summed this rationale better than I can.

“Lightning Lab is turning out 30 entrepreneurs with a harder edge and keener and smarter drive to succeed than many. How far they go is up to them, but these companies are 12 weeks old and they already have more scars than most get in several years.”

These nine companies were whittled from 87 applications to LL late last year, and each received $6000 per head from a set of founding investors. By being part of a three month intensive acceleration programme, their digital concepts have been validated, built and established with early customers.

The startups have been mentored by local and international advisers, faced hard deadlines in growth targets and a structured model for accelerating early stage business growth based on international best practice.

When Te Hau talks about scars, she’s not exaggerating – but obtaining them so quickly and with the ability to ask advice such as “what should we do now” in such a concentrated manner – is something so valuable it really can’t be priced.

What is patently clear is that the 30 participants, and their wider networks, have had such an injection of entrepreneurial spirit and possibilities that multiplier spinoffs and benefits can only result for Wellington and New Zealand.

Put another way; this programme, with its hand-holding, arse-kicking and question-asking intensiveness will create a virtuous circle of increasing wealth.

And sure, like all of us, these startups have, and will make mistakes.

But, they know what needs to be done to get back on track, or alternatively how to fail-fast (and then get on with another project).

Because the Demo Day was asking for money, what can be reported publicly is limited.

Suffice to say that (and you’d have to imagine that the mentoring has been also strong in this area) the investment dollars being asked for by the startups seemed reasonable and appropriate.

Many of the companies had potential exponential growth rates, but realism ruled.

It is now up to the individual companies themselves to reveal if or what investment(s) have been made in them – and as this becomes known Lightning Lab will have its own raison d’etre validated.

For the record, those presenting were:

LearnKo – delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia, harnessing Australasian tutors, training them and providing them with content to deliver through an online classroom

Publons – platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build a reputation for their contributions. An alternative to the extremely slow, expensive and closed status quo of the past 300 years of academic publishing

Adeez – specialist mobile marketing platform, enabling brands and their agencies to increase their ROI on mobile marketing

Expander – tracking and analytics platform that protects brands by providing them with powerful tools to combat counterfeit, while connecting manufacturers and consumers

teamisto – turn a typical business sponsorship donation to an amateur sports club or team into an effective advertising channel with measurable results

Questo – works with organisations by providing a platform to create activities with incentives and rewards to engage their visitors. A mobile app and analytics engine provides the ability to track, measure and evaluate their visitors’ behaviour

promoki – social media platform that gamifies photo and video contests. Help brands co-create advertising campaigns with their audience and distribute crowd-filled media across multiple social networks

Kidsgomobile – software device to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. Tool that notifies parents if their child engages in potentially risky phone behaviour and helps them resolve these issues

WIP – platform that enables professional video makers to share their work-in-progress videos with their team and clients to gather precise and meaningful feedback

Without doubt, some of these startups will go on to become much larger businesses. Without doubt too, most of them would not have got to this ‘go’ position without Lightning Lab.

The learning has been immense, and a thumbs up to those investors and sponsors who put their hands in their pockets from the get-go to kick the whole thing off.

Applications for the next Lightning Lab 2014 will open in September this year.

Posted in Angel investment, cloud computing, Development, Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, IT, Market validation, proprietary, SciBlogs, start-up | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

One way to crack a coder shortage

Posted on May 17, 2013 by

Ever tried to get hold of a professional who can write computer code?

Such is the shortage, that a recent would-be returning ex-pat Kiwi, who knew how to program, put out a general inquiry through WellRailed if anyone in Wellington or wider NZ would be interested in meeting once he got here.

Apparently he immediately had 26 replies, and half a dozen offers of employment, sight unseen, with no interview whatsoever.

So; it would seem there’s a definite shortage of people who understand and can manipulate the workings of computers, mobile devices and apps.

It is this developer (another name for coder and programmer) shortage that’s driven Enspiral (a digital collective cum incubator cum clever people autonomously working together) to offer a type of ‘coding for dummies’ course, specifically around Ruby programming. (sticK’s had a couple of stories on Enspiral’s different type of business model before; see here and here.)

It is called Code Yoga, and its intent is to expose people who have never coded before to what it is about, and, reasonably quickly, help them get a level where could be employed at a junior coding level. From there – well, the world’s your oyster if that’s your bent.

This is very much an Enspiral kinda thing to do.

The collective’s co-creator, Joshua Vial, and the rest of its current eco-system of 105 people based mainly in Wellington but linked to Hong Kong, Berlin, New York and Phnom Penh, share a philosophy of helping people to help themselves.

It is part of the social enterprise model that drives most of the 12 companies that reside (the wrong word but it will have to do) under its umbrella.

Enspiral itself is programmer short-handed at times, so at the very least it is feeding its own needs.

But, in identifying a patently obvious shortage, and doing something about it in a ‘just do it, just learn it’ manner, Enspiral’s demonstrating an attitude that’s bigger than itself.

According to Vial, many of the dozen or so people who have done the course since it kicked off in recently (advertised through the interesting ‘teaching/learning’ platform Chalkle), have graduated to real, paying jobs in IT.

These include writers, teachers, other types of professionals, as well as students.

As a crash course compared to university or polytech based one to three year courses, it is obviously quite different.

However, as a way of introducing newbies to the hidden world of code, and whether it is a gig they’d like to have a go at for a while, these Enspiral guys deserve some credit.

Heck, some of them might even enjoy it as a challenge!

P.S. Enspiral’s kicking off a dev boot camp in the next month or two too – keep an eye out if you’d like to be part of t

Posted in cloud computing, Development, education, IT, SciBlogs, technology | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

National Science Challenge winners underwhelm

Posted on May 14, 2013 by

There’s only one word really to describe the winners of the National Science Challenge – ‘wow’ writ small.

Or, perhaps it is just me that is completely underwhelmed by the announcement of 10 research areas that can comfortably be binned as business as usual.

Though, pity the team tasked with coming up with an overview of the NSC considering there were only 200 entries from greater New Zealand on where and what we should research.

Right from the get-go the challenge lacked direction, had a sort of what is it all about non-rationale.

As chairman of the NSC, the prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman is obliged to put a positive spin on the challenge.

As he commented recently:

“The intent is to invigorate the science system, allowing it to become more collaborative and strategic in its approach.”

As the Tui billboards say,

‘Yeh, right’

But firstly, a reminder of the challenges selected.

  • Aging well – harnessing science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life
  • A better start – improving the potential of young New Zealanders to have a healthy and successful life
  • Healthier lives – research to reduce the burden of major New Zealand health problems
  • High value nutrition – developing high value foods with validated health benefits
  • New Zealand’s biological heritage – protecting and managing our biodiversity, improving our biosecurity, and enhancing our resilience to harmful organisms
  • Our land and water – Research to enhance primary sector production and productivity while maintaining and improving our land and water quality for future generations
  • Life in a changing ocean – understanding how we can exploit our marine resources within environmental and biological constraints
  • The deep south – understanding the role of the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean in determining our climate and our future environment
  • Science for technological innovation – enhancing the capacity of New Zealand to use physical and engineering sciences for economic growth
  • Resilience to nature’s challenges – research into enhancing our resilience to natural disasters

They’re all worthy, but.

The trouble is, they’re just another ad-hoc add-on to a science and innovation system that has no clear idea of what we, NZ Inc, are trying to do, or of what particular piece(s) of a very large pie we should/could concentrate on.

At the same time (and I appreciate this is dirty-type talk) – these challenges don’t address where and how are we going to make more money for our country by clever use of R&D, and taking such new products and services to market?

There’s no connectedness between science and the economic health of our country. It means there a lack of relationships and countrywide partnering linking everything.

The NSC will achieve nothing. The public will have no more engagement with science, business is none the wiser, scientists will simply keep on keeping on.

Amongst comment, from my point of view, the best came from Prof Shaun Hendy – who was courageous enough to call a whole lot of nothing exactly that. Shaun’s a professor at Victoria University’s School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, as well as deputy director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He also a regular answer-provider on National Radio’s evening show. Original story is here.

“Of the 10 science challenges selected, only one really addresses one of the key economic challenges our country faces: namely the over-dependence of our economy on the primary sector,” he said.

“Our government invests far less in physical sciences and engineering than those of other small advanced economies, leaving our economy perilously exposed to volatile commodity markets.”

Having one of the challenges “simply aimed at making better use of physical science and engineering research is disappointing, given that we have just created a new organisation, Callaghan Innovation, to do exactly this”, Prof Hendy said.

Exactly.

We have MBIE, Callaghan Innovation, the Marsden Fund, these challenges – but no clear idea of what we’re doing.

Certainly is business as usual.

Posted in Entrepreneur, high tech, Innovation, SciBlogs, Science, Science policy, sustainability, technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Email sales tool allows companies to ‘dress to impress’

Posted on May 7, 2013 by

On the face of it, creating clever emails with embedded graphics and other gee-whizz stuff that acts as a smart sales tool should be pretty easy.

But (apparently), there’s only three companies around the world have pulled off the feat – including Auckland-based LiveLink Connect.

The three-year old six-person entity (you can hardly call it a start-up now), was incubated through The Icehouse and has had two angel funding rounds for a total of about $450,000 invested.

Its founder and managing director Jason Roberts (disclaimer….an old mate of mine) had been in sales and marketing roles for a number of years and more often than not found email a terrible sales tool.

“It was hard to share information between distributors, retailers and customers, and, if as a salesman you sent an email, you had no idea if it was opened,” says Roberts.

“As a salesman, you want to ensure your email dresses to impress and ensure the ability to perfectly time your follow up call, so that was one of the things we set out to do.”

Roberts et al have created what they call ‘everything email’, which as well as being robust technology is also able to work with other email products LLC has on a collegial basis.

For example, company logos are rendered properly no matter what type of device the email is read on (and estimates now are that 50% are done so on a mobile device), whether it has been opened, or even if a disclosure document has been read.

The latter ability is especially important for those selling financial services such as insurance or broking other products – and having an electronic proof of a disclosure having been opened is becoming an increasingly important sales tool for LLC.

“What we’ve created, and continually improving is technologically complex, though, being cloud-based means it has to be simple, easy, secure and cheap,” he says.

“The information and data we can provide back to our clients about what actions have occurred as a result of the email makes its an invaluable marketing and sales tool – exactly what we set out to achieve.”

Roberts says LLC’s next major development is a sophisticated and integrated ‘statement stopper’. That is, to halt the sending of letter-based bills such as electricity, and instead has them sent by email.

LLC’s tracking ability indicates whether a customer hasn’t opened a company’s email, and a paper statement can then be automatically sent by snail-mail.

At that stage, Roberts expects to feature on the radar of a larger company looking to expand its offering, “so in five years or less we’re definitely looking to be acquired.”

Given that LLC is export-expanding, and is now trialing its technology with CMC, a division of giant Indian company Tata, that five year window may be short.

Not too bad for a sales tool that seems a sitter but obviously is a difficult one to pull off.

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