The Startup Ecosystem

Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures in New York, is one of the more prolific Venture Capital bloggers going around. I frequently enjoy his posts on 'A VC', where he covers a range of topics. One that caught my eye recently, was one on Startup Ecosystems.

There has been a lot of talk at the moment around the driving NZ's knowledge economy, in particluar a discussion paper from the New Zealand Institute, and a report on a recent workshop, 'Improving translation of publicly funded research for economic benefit' led by NZ Chief Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman.

In this report, Sir Peter states that we must recognise that the issues we face (there are many - see the report!) are not exclusive to NZ, that other countries have the same ones, no system is perfect, some do it better, some do it worse, but we are a long way behind.

To quote Fred verbatim from his post "Startup Ecosystems Take Time":

"I think it is good to think about decades when you think about the development of new startup hotbeds.

In the first decade, you are largely making it up, copying what works elsewhere, the VCs and entrepreneurs are largely doing it for the first time, and while you can have successes, they are mixed with a lot of failures. That was 1995 to 2005 in New York City and 1965 to 1975 in Silicon Valley.

In the second decade, you start to get it right. The entrepreneurs are doing it for the second or third time. The infrastructure has developed (lawyers, VCs, recruiters). And it is easier to get talented employees to do a startup. This is where we are in New York City now and is where Silicon Valley was from 1975 to 1985.

In the third decade, the ecosystem is fully formed and producing great companies. That is where Silicon Valley has been from the mid 80s on."

According to this analogy, it took Silicon Valley 25 years to mature. If you consider New Zealand has seen declining economic prosperity since the 70's, then that "first decade" has actually been something like four for us! Lets hope 2010 is the year we start getting it right...

Reaching Out...

I was recently sent a link to an article in The Australian, on a survey completed by the UK Innovation Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, on "Knowledge Exchange between Academics and the Private, Public and Third Sectors. The survey, which elicited 22,000 responses, made for interesting reading.

It turns out (in the UK anyway) that academics are engaged in a wide range of interactions with a wide range of partners in each of those sectors - 40 per cent of respondents worked with the private sector, 53 per cent co-operated with the public sector and 44 per cent with a third sector such as charities. I guess the big question to be asked here is, how much did this happen, and is engaging once in the last 3 years sufficient for an academic to give a 'yes' answer? In the case of this survey, I suspect it is, but for my liking once every three years could hardly be called engaging.

Whether that may or may not be the case, one thing was obvious from the survey - academics do seem to have motivation for Knowledge Exchange, albeit for different drivers - improve teaching, greater insights, test practicality etc., rather than making money. However, there are a few constraints to them doing so, the largest being lack of time and university bureaucracy. Academics can't do everything (as I've said before), and as the authors point out, after teaching, administration, outreach etc:

"There may be little capacity left within the university system for a greater level of interaction between academics and external organisations. Simply too much pressure may be placed on universities, or the academics within them, to engage with others and achieve economic impact. Furthermore, such pressure could undermine some of the core strengths of many universities in particular if it leads to less basic research."

This, coupled with the fact that the initiation of external activities was done by Technology Transfer Offices only 24% of the time, suggests the need for special/improved expertise in this area - just as Sir Peter Gluckman has mentioned in several speeches this year, and as Mark Dodgson points out in 'The Australian':

“There are implications for technology transfer and commercialisation offices. These should better reflect the diversity of their home institutions' missions and be much broader in the range of interactions they support. They have to ensure their commercial transactional approaches do not deter academics from initiating conversations with external parties."

I wonder what the results of such a survey would be in New Zealand? Perhaps the academics amongst you could think about who you've approached externally in the last 3 years to ensure your research has impact?

Trailblazing

I was just made aware of a new website by the Royal Society UK, called Trailblazing. Compiled by scientists, science communicators and historians, it celebrates 350 years of Royal Society publishing in the form of an interactive timeline that users can wade through at their own pace.

Some of the big ideas in science are present, including NZ's own Ernest Rutherford. One of the things I love about science is the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants, yet have the ability to make our own contribution. Perhaps that's why the scale extends to 2050...who knows what might turn up there!

Check it out, its a fascinating site.

No. 8 Wire

There's an interesting article on Stuff.co.nz this morning about NZ's No. 8 wire mentality being the thing that is actually hampering our growth as a country.

I blogged about this in one of my first posts on this blog, which you can read here.

As per usual there are some fantastic comments in the comments section of the article, but also some mind-boggling ones that illustrate perfectly some of the themes discussed in the article itself.

I'm glad we have people with drive and vision who are willing to step up and give it a go. Science has a big part to play in all of this, and I know from my experience as both a scientist and a junior venture capitalist that the people I work with and for do what they do because they genuinely believe that they can make a difference for everybody in this country. It angers me that when they succeed or encourage others to fulfill their potential they are labelled as 'greedy'. I couldn't agree more with comment #46, by Gareth Chaplin - the person who actually commissioned the report. The same people who criticise are the same people who lament the deficiencies in our infrastructure, health, and education systems.

If this is how the country views its innovators and their role, then the increased standard of living that we all seek, isn't going to happen any time soon.

Geometric Growth and finding our Mojo

I frequently enjoy the blog posts of Chris Dixon, a web startup guru operating out of New York. One of his latest posts discussed Startup career paths, where he states that a career start in a startup is like an apprenticeship in becoming an entrepreneur.

If you talk to any of the main commentators on what NZ's high tech economy requires for growth, it is geometric growth. Much in the way Neville Jordan describes in this article about the success of his old company MAS Technology leading to half a dozen employees starting their own telecommunications businesses in NZ.

An interesting non-tech parallel is that of Mojo Coffee and their 'magic formula'. Mojo has expanded throughout the Wellington region and nationally since its establishment in 2003. Being in the service industry it is vital for them to retain the personal touch. "Its all about people", says owner Steve Gianoutsos in the Jan 2009 article on Stuff.co.nz. He has turned down numerous requests for franchise licenses, preferring to go into partnership with employees from his stores to open new stores. This is geometric growth - a store opens, another two stores open with someone from the previous store, which generate a further few stores, and so on and so on.

If NZ is to generate the 200 new tech companies people such as Prof. Paul Callaghan talk of, we need people to do "apprenticeships in entrepreneurship", as Chris Dixon says. If you want to really make a difference to NZ as a recent graduate, working for (or even starting) a startup company is a great way to do this. The benefits of working in a startup are well documented.

Although we are not a startup company just yet, I've learnt one or two things myself this year while working at scaling up and commercialising some of our university research toward forming a startup company. That is a post for another day, however.

Scared of letting go?

There was an interesting article on Stuff.co.nz last week about Crown Research Institute AgResearch having to find work overseas in order to meet the NZ Government's demands for a 9% dividend - which has come under criticism from some.

I agree with CEO, Andrew West - business is business, and I think this highlights what, in my opinion, is one of NZ's big problems - the inability to let ideas (and businesses) go. Jim Donovan talked about this with respect to businesses and manufacturing on his blog 'En Avant' last week.

The world will see increasing food shortages due to its burgeoning population, and with the growth of developing nations, that means the potential market is getting increasingly bigger. If the Chileans mentioned in the article succeed in developing a pastoral export business based on our expertise and IP, and we perhaps had a stake in that business, surely that would be more beneficial than keeping quiet and fending for our tiny selves, wouldn't it? What's more, competition and networks are conducive to innovation, and that is how we really want to be viewed - as an exporter of ideas. Perhaps some of my economist friends could shed some light on this...

If we are to succeed in an increasingly flat world, surely it is better to have our ideas out there being used - a small piece of a HUGE pie is a lot better than a large piece of not much. Don't you think?

Scientists need to be Entrepreneurs?

A few posts back, I posted my interpretations of the remarks made by Chief Scientist Sir Peter Gluckman at a seminar in Wellington on ‘Can Transforming Science Transform New Zealand’. As I pointed out in the post, I agree with Sir Peter on his comments that the boundaries between science and business are blurred. As he said, there has been a shift towards scientists taking responsibility for business in proposals for funding. This leads to confusion and ultimately second rate science from which not much can be achieved. The scientists should be left the research and business should be left to the development.

Last week I noticed that Godfrey Bridger wrote in his opinion piece in the Dom Post that ‘Scientists Must Become Entrepreneurs’ and that money should be spent to train scientists in business on the job. The danger with this approach is that we will lose the fundamentals of basic research if all our scientists are ‘forced’ to conform to some entrepreneurial stereotype. Like Sir Peter, and Simon Upton, I believe that money would be better spent training experts to understand the technology transfer and commercialisation process, and to attract large multinationals to NZ that have money to invest in RST.

Isis Innovations, Oxford University’s tech transfer arm, are one of the most successful companies in the world at commercialising university research. Managing Director, Tom Hockaday, states that Isis will only commercialise an inventors research if the inventor wishes. That is a quite an important point, and illustrates to me that not all scientists need to be entrepreneurs for successful high growth businesses to emerge – we just have to understand the parties involved and the processes a little better. Like the Gen Y Scientist points out, and which I think that Tom Hockaday is saying as well, is that universities are complicated beasts. There are issues around publication vs. patenting, time for teaching etc, all which need to be ironed out or understood a little better.

And while it's true that a lot of the world’s most innovative technologies have come out of universities, people seem to forget that the private sector has played an important role in innovation in other countries with their huge R&D budgets. Take Finland for example. It trained its population in Finnish universities, that then went on to work for Nokia, which reinvested its R&D budget in Finland. Hence, the universities were focused on fundamental research while transformational research (or more specifically, development) could be done by the multinationals. The same could be said for Pharmaceutical Multinational’s in Singapore. NZ’s private sector investment remains woefully low, and so perhaps in NZ the focus has fallen on public sector R&D to make up for the shortcomings of its supposedly bigger brother. Federated Farmers CEO, Connor English (brother of Finance Minister Bill), has recently questioned the absence of multinational agri-companies like Rabobank, GSK, Syngenta and Bayer Cropscience in New Zealand - I couldn't agree more.

Scientists will continue to beat the drum for the importance of their work and they will cleverly figure out how to get the most out of the miserly amounts of funding they are given. We do need some scientists with an entrepreneurial spirit of course (just as we need IT professionals, designers and engineers with entrepreneurial spirits also), but at some point somebody must also step up and play a part too.

But hey, that’s fine. Us scientists will just add it to the long list of other things required of us – scientist, problem solver, government lobbyist, environmental protectionist, PR and media guru, crystal ball gazer and now businessman and entrepreneur...

Lack of Logical Career Paths...and PostDocs

Sciblogs was launched last Wednesday by the NZ Science Media Centre. It's the largest science blog network in NZ and puts in one place all NZ’s science blogs. The Scientist NZ is honoured to be a part of it. It’s a fantastic effort, and hopefully will go a long way to encouraging discussion about science in NZ.

Through Sciblogs I was made aware of this post and this article in the ODT about Otago University future-proofing itself against an increasing shortage of academic staff.

In my opinion, what could be part of the blame is the lack of a logical career progression in NZ science once you have finished your PhD. This has been written about before by the Gen Y Scientist here, but in light of this article and comments from the Chief Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman about the lack of career paths in NZ science, I think it should be mentioned again.

It would be impossible to get a job as an academic as soon as you finish your PhD (unless you were Einstein), so when one finishes a PhD and wants to become an academic they usually take up a postdoc position in a research lab in order to gain further experience in academia. After this they look to make the transition to lecturer.

The problem in NZ is that postdocs are not funded by the university system (like PhD students), and as a result overheads must be paid to their host university from the grant they are working on. As they are more qualified they demand a higher salary, and so combined with overheads, a postdoc will cost $150,000 per year, while a PhD student will cost $30,000 - you can get 5 PhD students for every 1 postdoc! This means that the number of postdocs that get written into grant applications is incredibly low compared to PhD students, and so many recent PhD graduates looking for a career in academia go overseas.

Once overseas, where they are exposed to better funding regimes, higher salaries and a lifestyle that isn’t actually that bad (in some ways I agree with Dr. Andrew Wilson in the 'Big Science' article), why would they come back?

Perhaps one solution is that the NZ government could in some way subsidise more postdoc positions so that they can conduct post-PhD research in NZ. That way they can gain valuable experience and perhaps go some way to filling the supposed shortage of academic staff.

The Blurred Boundary Between Science and Business

The second point from Sir Peter’s talk ‘Can Transforming Science Transform NZ?’ revolved around the blurred boundaries between science and business. The two are very different. Things cannot be easily measured in science that are valued and required by business, for example, profit forecasts, return on investment and other milestones. Science just doesn’t work that way – it is often hard to predict what will happen.

Simon Upton points out in the Dominion Post that “Politicians and managers just don't know enough about the essentially creative drivers of research to try to manage them.”

Sir Peter stated that the importance of business planning in grant applications has increased over the last decade. And so it should I believe, because scientists should not just get ‘money for jam’ - they must be accountable to taxpayers like everyone else. But because NZ Business investment in RST is so low, this has meant that the role of this business planning has fallen largely with the scientists, and as pointed out above, scientists really have no idea about business and vice versa.

Scientists have confused themselves between technology transfer and fundamental research, essentially trying to fit a mould while being micromanaged via the strict government grant process, which in Sir Peter's view creates a cynicism that leads to second-rate science.

Second-rate science achieves nothing, and to quote Simon Upton again, "attention would be better expended ensuring that those with the necessary business skills can access and commercialise the opportunities that arise in the ordinary course of research". In short: in R&D, the scientists should be left to the 'R' and the business/technology transfer experts should be left to the 'D'

I’m not so sure our research is second rate and in my experience traveling to conferences worldwide, I know that we can definitely hold our own. Do we simply not have the volume of basic research to drive innovation? Or is it that we lack the business skills to take great ideas to scale?

Potential solutions mooted here were:

• Better assistance schemes for matching up science and business
• Academics on company boards
• Business Development/Technology Transfer skills as part of career development
• Cheaper access to university research facilities

I agree with Sir Peter and I think he is creating a much-needed stir in his new role. The onus now lies with Prime Minister John Key and the National Government to make good on claims like "science should be at the heart of Government”, and "RST will be expected to play a bigger part in improving our economic performance". The recent announcements by Minister Mapp, indicate that things may at last be moving in the right direction.

Collaboration vs. Competition

The first point for improvement from Sir Peter Gluckman’s seminar “Can Transforming Science Transform New Zealand?” is a case of collaboration vs. competition. NZ has the most competitive science funding system in the world via too many funding avenues and far too many institutions.

Basically too many people are competing over not enough money, which has reduced scientists to begging and caused the destruction of logical career progressions in science in NZ (and the departure of top scientists overseas). In a country as small as ours, there will always be competition over funding, and so we must look for ways to maximise benefit from what we’ve got.

Sir Peter believes one answer lies in collaboration. He argues that it is hard to share knowledge in a system with so much individual and institutional competition. Individual competition comes about largely because of PBRF funding, while there are over 20 Institutions in NZ in which "RST is a matter of survival not a matter of national interest." Surely collaborating more, both domestically and internationally would give rise to more innovation. We need a new approach – we need to become an exporter of ideas, similar to countries of our size like Singapore, Denmark, Finland, and Israel who are capable of taking ideas to scale through collaboration.

NZ is in an excellent place to do this for a number of reasons:

• We have a good reputation
• A good education system
• A practical economic base
• Strength in other sectors (like the Trade, Manufacturing and Service sectors)
• We are close to a growing Asia
• And we are small (which is an asset contrary to popular belief)

I believe the problem NZ will have is that we will struggle to let our ideas go: we like the idea of Kiwi people in Kiwi jobs (blogged about here). NZ has made excuses in the past about being too far away from its markets. The biggest market is becoming closer by the day, and I believe the growth of and collaboration with Asia could have a huge impact on NZ – if we choose to grasp it. The old adage of 50% of something large vs. 100% of something small certainly rings true in this instance.

Can Transforming Science Transform New Zealand?

Sir Peter Gluckman is the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of NZ. His appointment in early 2008 was a good signal that the NZ government wishes to re-examine the role of science in NZ's political decision making - something that has been lacking for quite sometime now.

On Monday I saw Sir Peter speak on "Can Transforming Science Transform New Zealand?" He said that in NZ we have missed the boat on the valuation of science research. We were a lucky country until the 70's, with our commodity exports (meat, dairy, wood, wool etc.) earning us prosperity (until recently), and because of that we've valued science only as a nice to have not a must have.

Consequently, we now have a cultural barrier to substantial Research, Science and Technology (RST) commitment, whereas other countries that invested in RS&T in the early days see it as a must have. Sir Peter has pointed out before that we seem to have forgotten the important role science played in making our primary sectors as strong as they once were.

In essence Finance Minister English wants to know what “bang-for-buck” he is getting. Sir Peter rephrased this as a question to the audience: “is science relevant to NZ’s economic growth?” [the answer is yes!], and so how can we shift the attitude from science being a nice to have, to science being a must have.

Changing this view will be incredibly challenging, but Sir Peter is the right man for the job, because he is well respected in scientific, business and media circles, and is not afraid to speak his mind!

Two main areas (of many) he highlighted for improvement are:

• collaboration vs. competition; and
  
• the blurred boundary between science and business
  

In the next couple of posts I’ll explain what I think he means by these points and add a few of my own.

Stay tuned…

NIWA Wellington Science Fair

Last week Victoria University's School of Chemical and Physical Sciences hosted the NIWA Wellington Regional Science Fair. Last year I was honoured to be asked to judge the chemistry prize for this competition and it was inspiring to see so many young people interested in talking about science and in particular what they had done in their projects. It certainly took me back to the days of making lemon batteries or erupting volcanoes in my primary school days!

The top prizewinners this year were:

• Zofia Arthur, for her work researching the most effective windbreaks (in which she found trees and shrubs were the most effective in comparison to perforated metal and solid walls);
• Thang Tran, for his meticulous analysis in finding that juice stored at temperatures too high and too low will have lower levels of vitamin C, and;
  
• Nika Thomson, who found that exercise does significantly improve the blood sugar levels of type 1 Diabetics.

Most of these students will be entering university in the next few years, and so the challenge now is making sure these young minds continue their scientific careers. How that can be done effectively with the mulitude of career options open to students at this stage, I do not know. One thing I do think we need to do though, is celebrate and publicize great scientific work, just as the NIWA Science Fair does. Who know's? Perhaps one of these students could be the next MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year, Bayer Innovator of the Year, or even a Nobel Prizewinner. Only by celebrating and talking about these achievements (and science in general) will young students become aware of the many wonderful career options open to them in science.

Hot Competition

There have been some really cool competitions around at the moment involving science problem solving and entrepreneurship.

Two that spring to mind are IRL's "What's your problem New Zealand?" Competition, where companies from industry pitched a research problem to IRL in order to win $1 Million of research funding at IRL, and the Auckland University Business School "Entrepreneurs Challenge" which is funded by ex Auckland Business School graduate, Charles Bidwill, to the tune of around $3 Million.

The winner of the IRL "What's your problem New Zealand?" Competition was Resene paints, who came up with a proposal to develop paints from sustainable sources. Most of the ingredients in current paint products are derived from petroleum feedstocks, and so this research will help to break the long term dependance on such raw materials. Entries for the "Entrepreneurs Challenge" closed only last week, but are sure to produce some incredible ideas.

Competitions like these are a great way to not only solve problems, provide funding for start-up companies and teach new skills, but also to highlight the amazing talent we have in NZ in problem solving and developing high growth businesses. One can only wonder what things could be like if there was more money available so all the ideas could get funded! Then we may be well on the way to creating a knowledge-based economy!

Whats your problem?

AngelLink

Angel investing is a term that is used to describe very early stage investment in start-up companies. Typically, the "Angel" or "Business Angel" will provide their own capital, as opposed to a Venture Capitalist, who calls on capital from a managed fund others have contributed to. It is an incredibly risky but vital part in the venture financing structure, as it often helps bridge the so-called "Valley of Death" between lab research and a commercial opportunity by providing funding for prototype development, market research, etc. As there is a trend both worldwide and in NZ for Venture Capitalist's to move more towards funding companies with established revenue streams, this type of financing is becoming increasingly important. I have witnessed myself the difficulties in crossing this "Valley of Death", and it is often where many a good idea falls down.

Hence, I was pleased to read in the NZ Herald the other day about a new initiative called AngelLink. AngelLink aims to bring together active angel investors and the constant stream of high quality IP generated from NZ universities and Crown Research Institutes, to provide early stage funding for new technology companies. AngelLink has partnered with the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund (which was set up through the NZ Government to establish a Venture Capital industry in NZ), who will match AngelLink's contributions dollar-for-dollar, giving a total value of $8 million.



Overseas, many Angels organise themselves in networks. The attractiveness of an arrangement like this is that investors can pool their experience, networks and research to co-invest, creating a more nationwide approach to their investing. This creates greater deal flow, and a quicker time to market, which is critical for a country as small as NZ.

Although $8 million is just a start, I applaud these efforts - I just wish more could be done to help fill this "Valley of Death", as the amounts of money we're talking about for most of these investments are often relatively small. Although high net worth individuals make valuable contributions, personally I don't think we should have to rely on them to provide this type of funding. Perhaps the Government could take more of a leading role in this area and help bridge the gap even further.

ViNES

When I first started The Scientist NZ, one of my first posts was about a group of us who were keen to advance both our careers in science in NZ, and in a wider sense the knowledge-based economy in NZ.

Well, things are progressing nicely, and we now have a name, ViNES.

We decided on the very first day that we are a group of young and emerging scientists that are interested in making opportunities for ourselves and contributing to a knowledge-based economy in NZ. This may take the form of entrepreneurship, employment in industry, doing a post-doc, or even switching outside of science altogether.

To get where we wanted to go we decided that we need to:

• raise our profile
  
• build our networks
• upskill
  
• build a track record
  

Five of us met today and really made some progress toward making the ViNES concept work for us. It is now more clear than ever that what we want in the near term is exposure. This alone will help guide us towards our ambitions. Unfortunately, the ViNES blog was taken (but not used) by someone else. We are ViNES-NZ in the blog world, which is probably a good thing since NZ is who we are representing. Feel free to comment if you have other suggetions.

So there you have it. If you have anyone knows of any interesting events coming up we should be at, or any business that would like to brainstorm with us, please get in touch.

Big Science

There was an excellent article in the Listener last month about the role of science and technology companies growing the NZ economy. It features a number of comments from my employers at Endeavour Capital, and their portfolio companies, Veritide (who manufacture devices to detect anthrax spores) and Photonic Innovations Limited (who are developing gas detection equipment using lasers).

One of the comments by Dr. Andrew Wilson of PIL, was that his PBRF score had suffered because of time spent conducting commercially sensitive research for PIL, instead of publishing journal articles. For those that don't know, the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) is a way of allocating funding by ranking research performance (publishing) in the tertiary education sector. As pointed out in the Listener article, how can this be conducive to academics putting more time into research of commercial potential when they are more concerned with publishing their research in peer-reviewed journals in order to maintain their PBRF ranking?

While publishing and peer review are essential parts of academia and the scientific method (that will never, and should never change), perhaps more recognition in the PBRF system needs to be given to those that choose to patent their work instead of publish. As pointed out so eloquently by the Generation Y Scientist, universities are complicated beasts, and companies shy away from universities for a number of reasons. Perhaps the PBRF contributes to some of these reasons. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one.

New RST Strategy?

On Wednesday I attended the presentation by MP Wayne Mapp (Research Science and Technology Minister) on his vision for RST Policy in New Zealand.

Although I am always amazed at how long politicians can speak for and not say anything, I was actually quite surprised at the initiatives proposed in his speech. A few useful things may come out of this:

• Simplifying the whole system. This should hopefully mean less grant applications, and hence less time wasted. Talk to any academic and they will tell you that the amount of time they spend filling out grant applications, is hugely counterproductive. My supervisor once told me he could spend up to 1/5 of his time doing this! That is time wasted that could be spent on discovering the next big invention!
  

• More long term funding - good things take time, and so this gives the researcher more stability and confidence in their role.
  

• An examination of the funding balance of growth-oriented research (see here) and putting a bigger emphasis on the FRST to understand the value of their investments a bit better - this may mean that we find out exactly what things are worth putting money into, and as a result remain flexible to change investment policy further down the line if something isn't working.
  

Although one of the key things to the success of science contributing to the NZ economy (as highlighted in the speech) is "making it easier for business to be in touch with universities", it is ultimately how the two interact that will be important. But that is a post for another day.

We'll have to wait and see how this pans out - these changes will be made by the years end, and will be released in the Budget 2010.

* If you're interested you can listen to his speech via podcast over at the NZ Science Media Centre

NZ: Feeding the World?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be aware that I am an advocate for science underpinning the NZ economy and ultimately leading to the future prosperity of our nation. There is often the confusion that scientists like myself think that for this to happen, we need to abandon agriculture. Not true. Scientists are not stupid, and many of us realise the importance of farming in the economy of our small export nation.

I believe there is room for both. We should capitalise on the wealth of knowledge in this area, as well as add a few 'bolt-on' solutions. For example, Finland, a forestry nation, now has Nokia, and Denmark, a small dairying nation like ours, is now home to a $10B export business in wind turbines. Both countries have many more smaller high tech companies, and there is no reason why we can't do the same here. We just have to be a little bit smarter about it.

I read an article on stuff.co.nz the other day by Prof. Paul Monaghan of Massey University, about how NZ is not putting to good use its excellent ability to produce food, in order to capitalise on the growing market for the next generation of value added agrifood products. The rest of the world is already catching on to new products that involve new science and technology (nanotechnology for example), to revolutionise the food and drink industry in terms of better food processing safety, improved product shelf life and more healthy products. In fact, the use of nanotechnology has already been introduced into the food and drink industry with successful applications in a number of areas including stay fresh packaging, butters and slim-line milkshakes.

In a world that is becoming more populous, short on energy and water, this could be an ideal area for NZ to apply some of its excellent food production knowledge, couple it with our brilliant image on the world stage, and NZ could feed the world with high value, high margin products.

And so back to the getting smarter bit. I believe in order to do both, we need a tweak in our science and technology research policy to a more balanced approach. Currently the government invests the majority of our science and technology research budget in the primary industry (36%). Yet if you look at the TIN100 (the top 100 technology companies in NZ), there are only 11 primary sector technology companies, comprising only 12% of revenue. Interestingly, the top 5 companies (nothing to do with agriculture) produce about $3 Billion revenue - not too bad for 5 companies I thought. As you can see, the results are not reflective of the investment made by area.

The rest of the world maintains a balanced approach and so should we. That way we can continue to add value to our primary sector through science and technology, in areas like high value foods where there are big gains to be made, but also remain flexible enough to 'bolt-on' a Nokia or Vestas should the opportunity arise.

Science Communication

One of the key things I think scientists don't do well enough, is communicate. I know I am not alone in having this view.

The scientific method of systematic observation, analysis, and peer review, is one of the most robust methods of investigation going around (and has been so for centuries). This approach has an inherent honesty, and I think perhaps one area in which science communication breaks down is the portrayal of this honesty. In the public's eyes (I hope...) scientists are looked to for answers and advice but the inherent honesty in the scientific method often means we are not willing to make a concrete claim - something is only true until proven otherwise. And so this leads to mistrust, or confusion. Scientists seem to be content with laying the facts down for someone else to make a decision, and being done with it.

Communication is not something that everyone is good at, and poor communicators can be found in almost any profession. Communication by scientists has become ever so vital however, given the pressures facing mankind in climate change, energy, and food and water shortages, for example.

And so the only way to improve this is through practice. It would be nice if a communication paper was a mandatory part of any degree, but this is unlikely. Through the NZ Science Media Centre I have become aware of a really cool collaborative project starting at the University of New South Wales. It is called the New Science Journalism Project and it invites science and journalism students to submit articles which will be delivered through online media.

I think this is a great way for students to gain real world experience, and later on in their careers, when the time comes for them to communicate their science, perhaps in the hope of gaining research funding, or even influencing a policy change, they will be experts.

A positive from the Job Summit

I was about to post a few months ago about the cut to $98 Million of postgraduate scholarships in the budget, but the moment seems to have passed. I was amazed with the lack of foresight by the Government - what better way to come out of a recession than to up skill and come out hitting the ground running, but they chose instead to stunt the development of NZ's next generation of young scientists by cutting funding in this area.

But here's one positive that's come out of the Job Summit a few months back. I haven't heard of many, but I am pleased about this one. It goes some of the way to making up for the loss of the said $98 Million dollars worth of cuts to scholarships.

The Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST) has announced a pilot scheme that will see 150 new internships created in industry, with the FRST providing salary contribution of up to $30,000 for a period of 9 months.

This is a great way to encourage industry to innovate and build linkages with universities. I think this is crucial in the development of NZ's knowledge economy, and the success of the model is evidenced by the emergence of the Finnish powerhouse, Nokia, out of a successful network of inventors who were trained in Finland's own university system and had strong linkages with industry.

If you are in business, I would love to hear your thoughts on this new initiative. What is your R&D capability currently like, and would you be willing to take on a young science and technology graduate if their salary was met halfway by the Government?