Wellington
Now that Steven Joyce has fixed (or not) the Novopay teachers’ pay debacle, perhaps he’d liketo turn his attention back to CallaghanInnovation .
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 SueSuckling 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 recentlyformed 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
Just to refresh your memory too Steven, CI kicked off in February this year and was supposed tocome up with a business case by the end of June. Which in itself is the cart before the horse in thenormal scheme of things (usually businesses have a business plan first) – and something I’m sureyou 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 stopsanywhere.
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 onhelping small companies grow through developing their good ideas, or whether helping largercompanies expand further by backing research, development and commercialisation of their effortsshould be where efforts are directed.
Personally, I can’t see that it is an either/or argument ….. a good idea, no matter where itcomes 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 ofwheelspinning.
I realise too that the 0800 Innovation telephone number was meant to address the huge number ofcompanies and entrepreneurs supposedly frustrated at not being able to talk to the right people atthe 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 smartsrequired – 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 notyet 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 bepromising.
So Mr Joyce – if you could just get CI to come up with a business plan, we can then get on withgetting 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 measurethe 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 hardlyworth the paper they’re written on.
In the scheme of things, the actual cost and the opportunity cost to our country of such waffleand non-action is a much bigger scandal than Novopay.