There’s a certain amount of stalking horse-ishness to Sir Peter Gluckman’s recent ‘Aucklandconversation’ (formerly known as Mayoral Conversations; speakers of repute).
As the chief science advisor, Gluckman’s past kite-flying thoughts on research and othermatters have generally preceded government action.
This speech (see
He’s pushing Auckland, as the country’s only centre with the scope and aspiration to be atruly international city, as doing more, much more, to lead the development of a true innovationecosystem.
Briefly doing justice to his talk, Gluckman’s strong on the notion that while we have thecapability, we’ve got to massively increase our combined effort to make more money in thehigh-tech areas that have protected and allowed countries such as Denmark and Switzerland toflourish. (He includes advanced foods for health in this category too).
It won’t be easy – again he gives the examples of Israel where the evaluation of at least 100ideas thought to be of value only sees one that justifies investment.
“Yet, the Israelis have no more researchers than we do, just a better linked up system,”Gluckman says.
Unlike Israel or Singapore or some of the Nordic countries with which New Zealand compares itsitself, we’ve never had a sense of crisis and urgency, and together with our inbredegalitarianism have undervalued the role of intellectual activity and science he reckons.
Our country also has the habit of believing in single interventions rather than integrated systemwide approaches, when the “key to all of what I’ve been saying is the need to have amulti-layered innovation ecosystem,” he says.
This has many components, with local government promoting, encouraging and if necessarypart-financing an “innovation city”. It needs the development of technology parks (he gives theWynyard quarter project a big boost later in his talk), clustering academia and entrepreneurs alongwith support services.
It also needs the institutions – hospitals, universities, technical institutes – to cooperaterather than compete. (He makes another aside point on whether universities are producing what a hightechnology economy needs. “Unfortunately a number of incentives in play in the tertiary sector canbe counter-productive and drive an over-emphasis on individualistic institutional behaviour.")
Gluckman’s better than many people at not just stating the problems, and fires up a few ideasthat would drive more innovation – again, drawing heavily on Israel’s example.
Many Israeli innovation incubators are owned jointly between investors and the local authority,or between the local authority and the university, and work with large sums of both government andprivate money.
“The Israeli model is based on a high ideas flow, an aggressive culling, high levels ofinvestment and international management and technology input from the start,” Gluckman says.
Importantly (in sticK’s opinion) “new ventures are supported with loans, not grants, toencourage entrepreneurial activity – written off if the product does not make it."
Auckland, he argues, is uniquely placed to create an environment for this type of innovation(again mentioning the Wynyard quarter).
Gluckman gives other examples of what success could look like (another post).
As he says though, “at the end of the day this is about environmental and cultural change –it starts at the bottom and it starts at the top.”
And while Auckland has been giving a lot of its infrastructural attention to transport, “tomake this truly a global city we also need to think about the knowledge infrastructure in thesciences and technologies.
The investment needed is partly fiscal, but so much more of it is psychological and motivational.Let us do the things that enable Auckland to brand itself as a city of innovation, a smart city in asmart nation.”