Wellington
OK, now we have Callaghan Innovation gestating its way into life - with no indication of how long the process will take, or even what itis we’re trying to bring to fruition.
At the same time we have the ‘GreatNew Zealand Science Project’ – a public wish list of all the wonderful things we couldresearch – which a committee of the great and the good are now trying to make sense of.
Meanwhile MBIE is still responsible for allocating some of the research funding too.
What these three initiatives clearly indicate is we actually don’t know what we’re doing, orwhy, or how.
Now, it seems like long ago (but actual fact it is only 18 months) that the High ValueManufacturing Review, a.k.a ‘PoweringInnovation’ , came out with its recommendations.
A re-read of this document might be a useful exercise for minister-of-everything StevenJoyce.
Recommendation 1:
Develop a strategic and structured approach for connectivity between research anddevelopment providers and the high value manufacturing and services sector
Whether this is going to be fulfilled by CI, who knows? Beyond motherhood and apple pie typestatements, the purpose (not a vision, not a mission both of which are meaningless) of CallaghanInnovation is still a mystery.
Rumbles from manufacturers, universities and CRIs about the lack of information, sense of shareddirection, or a strategic intent (let’s call it a plan) during the whole CI creation process showa glaring omission from the ‘Powering Innovation’ document – and more than a hint that scienceminister Steven Joyce is playing free and loose in whatever definition of innovation he’s decidedupon.
This brings me to the point – and possibly the only way for NZ Inc to strategically line up itsscience and innovation.
Among a number of excellent recommendations in
This also demonstrates, by inference, why our country’s currently on an unknown course to anunknown destination.
Recommendation 13:
Form a Science and Innovation Council, led from a very senior ministerial level inGovernment, with representatives from the university, public and private research organisations andfrom industry. Members should represent a wide range of science and technology themes, including thesocial sciences. The role of the Science and Innovation Council should be to establish a nationalinnovation strategy and advise on science and innovation policy and priorities.
Now I realise that such an S&I Council would force us to actually have a shared plan; andthat maybe that’s the last thing Minister Joyce wants.
But, until we, like Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan, Switzerland et al, have such a thing, then theperson in the street, researchers or industry will have no sense of being part of a wider (game)plan.
Running around and doing science and innovation ‘stuff’ in the absence of a national plan isdoomed to provide middling mediocrity. There will be plenty of peddling by all involved, but nobodywill be quite sure who or what it is we’re trying to get over the finish (start) line beforeanyone else in the world.
What we desperately need is an integrated innovation system from the fundamental science throughtechnology development to commercial exploitation of the results. We also need to ensure thisintegration includes research and commercialisation carried out by the Health Research Council.
Instead, what we have at the moment is a hodge-podge of barely connected elements, with nothingeven remotely looking like a plan in place.
Until we begin to get all our R&D cum innovation cum shared strategy ducks in a row throughsomething like a S&I Council, we have absolutely no show of emulating the exemplar countriesthat NZ Inc, through government officials, have visited dozens of times in the past 20 years.
Mind you, if we had a simple national science and innovation plan, then there would also be somecorresponding accountability.
That’s probably the fly in the ointment!