Ghost In The Machine

Polanyio Pitch

The author pitching at Lightning Lab Electric 2017

I first clapped my ears on Ghost In The Machine, the fourth album in the illustrious career of British rock band The Police, as a spotty faced teenager. The cover art for that album features images of three musicians depicted as a glitchy digital display, alluding to the concept of the human mind taking on a digital persona. Rather prescient when you consider that digital music required a stage full of computing power and miles of spaghetti wiring at the time and that this was almost 15 years before public internet arose. Artificial intelligence existed only in the fertile imaginations of authors such as Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and their readers. So what does the future hold for digital ghosts and how do we get our timing right in what is today a rapidly evolving field?

Fast forward to 2017 and I was about to experience a brief rock star moment of my own as I spent the most terrifying five minutes of my life presenting to an audience of corporate bigwigs and various supporters. The kernel of that pitch was that machine based technologies would become integral to utilities services management. Nobody got the point and thanks to the conservative nature of the energy industry incumbents, who were sponsoring our accelerator, the project sank without a trace. We had many”learnings” along the way as a team however and I’m glad I participated.

Only six years later, AI is rapidly embedding in almost every sector and obscene sums are being invested in companies providing a vast array of offerings. For starters the venture capital industry itself is being disrupted by artificial intelligence. Deployment of capital into AI is growing faster than almost every other technology sector right now, according to industry monitor Carta. Notwithstanding some concerns over governance, AI looks set to play an increasing role in our lives.

Timing is a big part of building a successful venture. Sometimes timing is even the most significant factor, regardless of the quality of the team or the idea. I’ve got the timing wrong on more than a few occasions in my life. Ideas alone are worthless without good execution and a bit of good luck as well. In most cases, failing fast is the best possible outcome. If AI really is the ghost in the machine and the timing is right now, I wonder if it will help us be more effective entrepreneurs, govern more wisely and be better guardians of the planet?

Paul Spence is a commentator, researcher and serial entrepreneur, a previous co-founder of a successful New Zealand based global technology venture, co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research & SondXF and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter/X @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events co-curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Bringing Change To The Top Table

Lyttleton Harbour, Christchurch

Lyttleton Harbour, Christchurch

Recently I attended a public discussion delving into “Otautahi Christchurch as an Innovation Hub”. It’s no secret that the city has confronted numerous challenges over the last decade or so. From devastating earthquakes to wildfires and a mass shooting. One could be forgiven for thinking that the place was on its knees. But it’s not. As the central city was being rebuilt, a core group of activators played a pivotal role through charting a course with innovation and collaboration at its core. Now the city is thriving. What if we germinated that approach into central government?

A number of the aforementioned group were present at the recent discussion event. Not the least of these was Raj Manji, who convened the session. As a former Christchurch City Councillor and tireless advocate for the city, Manji is no stranger to the challenges of navigating government processes in difficult times. He’s also a global thinker who takes action and attracts smart people with fresh ideas into his sphere of influence.

These are attributes that seem sadly lacking in many of our current politicians, including those who are likely to be in charge once the face of government changes in October. As The Opportunities Party (TOP) leader, Manji has a real shot at securing the Ilam seat at the general election. This would be a game changer because, under MMP, successful electorate winners get to “tag and drag” along some of their party list candidates. Potentially this means TOP could play a huge part in shaping the next government.

Why is this significant? It’s pretty clear that our current government has run its course and the wheels are falling off the proverbial wagon. Not a week passes where there isn’t either a dramatic exit or a revelation of bad behaviour by Ministers or coalition partner MPs. The present incumbents performed admirably during the pandemic, but the world has now moved on. History has also shown that governing parties very rarely secure three consecutive terms in New Zealand. For its part, the Opposition, whilst more disciplined than before, seem unable to generate intelligent policy or outline a coherent plan. Political change of some form is undoubtedly on the way. The question is – how do we optimise that change?

By standing up and supporting TOP I’m putting a stake in the ground in an effort to facilitate an optimal outcome. We desperately need fresh thinking and evidence based policy driven by responsible adults. If TOP fails to win a place at the table, we face the possibility of an unstable coalition underwritten by dogma and driven by the smug, sneering faces of the more extremist minor parties. Parties that do not necessarily have the interests of ALL New Zealanders at heart. This would be disastrous at this pivotal moment in history when society must act collectively to confront significant global issues.

Paul Spence is a commentator, researcher and serial entrepreneur, a previous co-founder of a successful New Zealand based global technology venture, co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research & SondXF and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events co-curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Bite Me!

bite me I was in a community call today contributing to the good work of the NZ Startup Council. It wasn’t long before somebody popped the “diversity question” into the conversation, complaining that women, migrants and people of colour can’t get help with their startups and do not get a fair hearing from investors in New Zealand. If that is true, I want to do something about it!

For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been active in the NZ tech community for around 20 years and I’ve seen a lot of bullshitters come and go. I’ve started three companies. One was a great success that we bootstrapped and exited in 2019, another tanked during acceleration and another one ticks along and generates a bit of cash here and there. So I’ve been around the block a few times – as they say.

BITE ME! – Building In The Ecosystem for Migrant Entrepreneurs!

At present I’m a part-time advisor at University of Canterbury incubator ThincLab. I’ve worked with a huge diversity of founders. Young students, women founders, Maori. Founders from all over the world. Germany, Iran, Pakistan, India, Japan, Ukraine, China, United States, France… the list goes on. I’ve especially enjoyed working with founders who identify as neuro-diverse. We certainly have an amazingly diverse group of founders here in Canterbury. Perhaps it is not the case elsewhere?

In startup land it’s important to look beyond our tiny isolated little islands from the outset. A lot of Kiwi founders don’t get this. So diverse founders and especially skilled migrant entrepreneurs bring huge value to our ecosystem. I’ve even started companies with a few of them. So it grinds my gears when I hear people complaining about the “lack of diversity” in our startup ecosystem.

Supporting our skilled migrant entrepreneurs is the fastest way to grow an even more diverse ecosystem, whilst building high value, scalable startups that contribute tangible economic value.

Take a look at We Love Local for example, a corporate gift box provider founded by my friends from Mauritius and Germany. They’ve been growing fast and have received multi-award recognition for their business which was started from scratch only a few years ago. How about Swallowing Technologies. Migrant female founder from academia commercialising her research globally. Caterway, my friends from Japan and Ukraine serving the corporate catering market.

So I’m putting my money where my mouth is by offering a free advisory session.

If you are a New Zealand based e-commerce, cleantech, foodtech, edtech or fintech (especially fintech) migrant founder struggling to make connections, recently arrived or just need some objective feedback on your project. Pitch me! I don’t care if you have lizard skin and shoot purple streamers from your arse. I’ve seen it all, trust me! What I do care about is your ability to execute, sharp intelligence, that you have technical skills and have some kind of workable business model. Oh and a sense of humour and a willingness to listen would definitely be useful.

Let’s talk and see where it leads. Reach me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

If I can’t help – I will probably know someone else who can.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a previous co-founder of a successful New Zealand based global technology venture, co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research & SondXF and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events co-curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Where Talent Wants To Live

superpro

FFA overall winners SuperPro with advisor Paul Spence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over a decade ago MacDiarmid Institute founder, renown physicist and technology entrepreneur the late Professor Sir Paul Callaghan proclaimed that we needed to make New Zealand “the place where talent wants to live”. This week’s result from the Food, Fibre & Agritech Supernode Challenge suggests we have reasons to be optimistic.

During the last few weeks it has been my great pleasure to be mentoring some of the teams involved in the 2022 Food, Fibre and Agritech Supernode Challenge accelerator programme, in my capacity as an advisor with ThincLab Canterbury. The Challenge, supported by ChristchurchNZ, KiwiNet and the Canterbury Mayoral Forum seeks to uncover innovative ideas with commercalisation potential from across research and business. Notably environmental sustainability has been a key theme that we asked applicants to address. 36 applications were whittled down to 24 participating teams, of which 12 finalists were selected.

Canterbury has a long and rich association with agricultural and is home to two universities and numerous land based research institutions. So there is no shortage of talent on offer. It has been an absolute thrill to see our young skilled migrants strongly represented among the participants in this programme. For many of them it has been a steep learning curve stepping out of the research lab and grappling with the fundamentals of business for the first time. But in every case they have grasped the opportunity and run with it.

Challenge overall winners Mahnaz Shaverdi and Associate Professor Ken Morison are food process engineering researchers from the University of Canterbury with big plans for turning plain old pea protein into a more desirable food source. Shaverdi moved from Iran with the aim of studying and raising her young family in New Zealand and Morison is a research engineer who returned to work in the dairy industry after completing his doctorate at Imperial College in London. Commercialisation of their research is timely. Plant-based ingredients are one of the fastest growing food categories globally, as witnessed through the recent investment by Khosla Ventures in Canterbury plant protein processor Leaft Foods.

Some commentators have been worrying lately that our technology startup ecosystem lacks diversity. But at a time when the world needs many bright minds to be working on solving a myriad of social, economic and environmental problems that confront us, it is exciting to know that our skilled migrants are making an increasingly significant contribution. This is a success story that we rarely hear about and that needs to be told more often. I’m sure Sir Paul Callaghan would be encouraged by this progress.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Free the 99

akaroa3 They called it the slap that reverberated around the world. A wealthy and privileged, angry man arrogantly displaying his lack of respect for a long established institution and the faithful community that had blindly supported him. No, I’m not referring to the infamous Oscars night incident, I’m talking about Grant Dalton’s acceptance of an offer from the city of Barcelona to host and fund the 2024 Americas Cup yacht race.

In 2017 a glowingly optimistic report from the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) estimated that delivery of the Americas Cup event would bring in $600 million to $1 billion in benefits to the New Zealand economy. A more recent post-event report estimated that less than half of the $348 million public investment was returned in economic benefits during the 2021 event. The New Zealand government share of the funding was $133 million.

In fairness nobody forecast that the event would fall amidst a global disease pandemic. It is a testament to local organisers (and the success of the government’s pandemic response) that the event ran at all in fact. It is claimed that 68 million global viewers watched the televised component of the event and almost 39,000 (mostly domestic) visitors provided a much needed boost to the Auckland regional economy. But the taxpayer investment in the event came with no guarantees that Team New Zealand would opt for the 2024 challenge to be held in New Zealand and despite a further $99 million offered by the New Zealand government, hard man Dalton predictably followed the big money elsewhere.

That’s a shame for Auckland. But in light of some commentators complaining about the elitist nature of the sport, perhaps it is not worth throwing more good money after bad. In the meantime, about the same time the report on outcomes of their $133 million stake was being released by MBIE, the Ministry was also taking a decision to actually reduce their $3 million annual investment in the local innovation ecosystem. Founder incubators will be disestablished from June this year and it is already known that some will receive no further government funding.

Founder incubators were once at the heart of the innovation ecosystem, providing a basis for entrepreneur capability building, a channel for investment flows and a pipeline of high tech startups that added long term, high value jobs to our economy. Not as glamorous as yacht races or movies, but creating sustainable value that persisted long after the initial public investment. Last month I explained how our neighbours and competitors across Asia-Pacific have begun to reap the rewards of long term ecosystem investment amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Which brings me back to the $99 million already budgeted for the 2024 Americas Cup investment. Would it not be more valuable to now allocate those funds towards developing our local innovation ecosystem? New Zealand is finally beginning to gain some traction in attracting foreign startup investors and we have a wealth of homegrown entrepreneurial talent ready to take on meaty global problems in areas such as climate, food and health. We need to capitalise on this opportunity as quickly as possible. Surely it is now time to invest in creating sustainable economic opportunities, rather than one off vanity events?

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

A Helping Hand Needed For Our Researcher Entrepreneurs

 

Hands

Source: Wikimedia Commons

It was fun this week attending the Global Entrepreneurship Network NZ Unconference which was hosted in a completely virtual environment. GEN NZ provides a community setting to engage in discussion and take action around promoting entrepreneurship. This article comprises the basis of my pre-recorded flash talk.

During the two years that I have spent at ThincLab Canterbury, we have supported dozens of (mostly young) entrepreneurs to explore their passions through our pipeline from the wonderful UC Summer Startup programme and we have assisted a number of early stage research based ventures founded by students and academics. This has led to over $10 million in capital being raised and the creation of many new high value jobs for our region. But there is a lot more work to do.

The European Union has recently launched the world’s largest and most ambitious multinational research and innovation programme Horizon Europe, investing almost 100 Billion Euros in “goal oriented research missions”. A special “innovation council” has an additional 10 Billion Euros to “fast track” innovations to market, including investment, incubation and advisory. We don’t have those kind of budgets here of course, but what is notable is that 10% of the public investment purse is focused on addressing downstream commercialisation under this initiative.

Notwithstanding the excellent work of organisations such as KiwiNet and MacDiarmid, there is quite limited support for entrepreneurial researchers here in New Zealand. In a recent article discussing the government review of research, science and innovation, Callaghan Innovation CEO Vic Crone argued that publicly funded research requires better and more commercialisation pathways.” Yet the already microscopic funding pool for incubators (including those connected with universities) was actually reduced this year and many providers have already been excluded from further participation. The pathways are actually receding.

We all understand the need to move our economy towards high value, less polluting industries. We also now know that this will be the biggest economic opportunity of our lifetimes. But research does not spring out of the lab and turn into a business overnight and here’s why…

  1. Our neighbours across Asia-Pacific have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars into developing their innovation ecosystems over the last two decades. For example $755 million invested into Advance Queensland. Now founders and investors are enjoying multi-billion dollar exits and reinvesting those winnings into new ventures. New Zealand has abjectly failed to make that investment in the ecosystem.
  2. Our universities and research institutes are well meaning but slow moving corporate elephants whose organisational design impedes innovation rather than accelerating it.
  3. Our academics and researchers are mostly not natural entrepreneurs and they are not incentivised to pursue venture opportunities in an environment where publishing papers is the only perceived way to achieve success and recognition.
  4. Research with commercial potential is not being connected to entrepreneurs and industry downtown who could make a difference.

Let’s find a better way by firstly investing a meaningful amount in developing our innovation ecosystem. Secondly all public funding for science and technology research should include a 10% component towards funding downstream commercialisation support. Finally, if academics and researchers see the value in their work but are unwilling to step up as founder entrepreneurs, then ensure that we match-make those projects with experienced local entrepreneurs and industry partners, so that value created remains onshore.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Stop The Grievance Virus

covidqrThe number of pandemic “experts” seems to be growing by the day. Now with a former Prime Minister wading into the murk, it has opened the floodgates allowing a wave of discontent to infect the nation. But actively demonstrating a partnership approach with business could deliver better outcomes and bring some smart minds to bear on the gnarly problems that confront us.

In recent weeks a number of prominent New Zealanders have been expressing their impatience with the government’s approach to managing the pandemic crisis. Curiously the concern is not so much about the travails of extended lockdowns, but more to do with the impact of travel restrictions as a throttle on economic growth. Unsurprisingly, most of the complainants are absorbed with their own particular business predicaments. But rather than be labelled “whingers” (to their credit) some creative solutions have been proposed by them.

In 2020 our government urgently cobbled together an interim response to keep us safe. Controlling foreign arrivals, managing quarantine and rolling out the largest vaccination programme in our nation’s history have been huge, imperfect undertakings delivered under extraordinary and rapidly evolving circumstances. Without these initiatives, I am absolutely certain that several vulnerable members of my immediate family would not have made it through the last 18 months.

One only needs to look at the data from offshore to understand the dire situation we find ourselves in. But perhaps the most telling data point is that investing in snuffing out the virus does indeed result in a quicker and stronger economic rebound, at least in the medium term. Placing our trust in a benevolent State has paid off so far, but patience is waning as purveyors of a wide variety of grievances across the political spectrum become ever more vocal. So openly demonstrating a willingness to have business as part of the conversation would be reassuring to the public, whilst bringing a greater diversity of thinking to the top table. None of this should obviate the need to carefully balance social and economic considerations, of course.

Putting aside the fact that I find sports analogies rather tedious, some of the ideas for getting New Zealand business moving again have actually been good ones. We have a wealth of technical and management expertise in our business community and there are homemade solutions available for improving almost every aspect of the crisis response. I believe where the difficulty lies is that there is a public perception at least of a lack of engagement between government and business. That may not be entirely fair, but in politics perception matters.

Early in the crisis, the government appointed former Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe as a liaison person between the government and business. That was a good move, but very little has been heard since. The Cabinet wisely considers advice from the pandemic technical advisory group who are respected clinicians and academics. But from time to time self appointed media darlings from scientific fields outside of epidemiology have an annoying habit of confusing the public by contradicting the actual expert viewpoints. So we have to be discerning about where we get information. Similarly we should not simply cave in to loud voices from the business sector who manage to get their views published.

Preserving life is paramount. But at present, it’s not clear what the exit strategy will be. There is a strong sense that the business community has not been fully enrolled as a partner in this process. I might add that this includes a wholesale failure to engage the talent sitting in our research institutions and technology incubators. What is clear however is that we will have no choice but to open up again in 2022, because the present approach is economically unsustainable in the long term. Elimination may already be nonviable and everyone (including business) need to deal with the reality of the new normal. The best piece of advice anyone can follow right now – get ready, get vaccinated!

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, principal at GeniusNet Research and an advisor at ThincLab. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.

Frontier Firms Follow-On Funding Favoured

frontier-firms

The recently published New Zealand Productivity Commission Report on the economic contribution of “frontier firms” predictably rated only a passing mention in local media. However recommendations in the publication could have far reaching impacts if implemented. But is the government listening?

Frontier firms are described as the most productive, profitable and innovative in an economy and generally have scale and global reach. But the report says that New Zealand’s frontier firms lag behind their global peers in terms of productivity. The OECD defines productivity as the ratio of economic output compared to inputs. Nations with highly productive frontier firms have greater competitiveness because of more efficient use of resources such as labour and capital. These nations also benefit from secondary “innovation and knowledge diffusion” within their economies.

Chairperson of the Commission Ganesh Nana, in an interview with Radio New Zealand says New Zealand is already well behind other small developed economies in the OECD in terms of productivity and the gap is growing every year. He says part of the reason is because we do not have many so-called frontier firms to which smaller innovation based companies can anchor. One of the key findings of the report is that the government must invest in developing a deeper innovation ecosystem, including supporting more commercialisation of research, science and technology.

But will the government take on board this message? Many of us currently working within the New Zealand innovation ecosystem have lobbied in the past for vastly increased resourcing and for setting greater aspirations as a nation. But such pleas have largely fallen upon deaf ears over the years. There are sadly also actors within our ecosystem that are philosophically opposed to any kind of government investment on the basis that only wealthy and well-connected players should be allowed in the game. This is despite the fact that our neighbours (and competitors) in places like Australia, South Korea and Singapore identified the value many years ago and have literally invested hundreds of millions of dollars into building out their own innovation ecosystems.

Developing more frontiers firms is not about growing more “unicorns” as some have mistakenly claimed. But it is about building a more interconnected economy that has research, science and technology at the heart of the beast. That’s a big ask for a small nation for which there are many competing priorities and challenges to face such as health, housing and climate change. But the key to motivating the decision-makers involves grasping the reality that having a powerful innovation ecosystem is actually part of the solution to those challenges.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, advisor at ThincLab within the University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship and principal at GeniusNet Research. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest. Paul is a co-author of the Entrepreneurship Manifesto 2020.

The Commercialisation Imperative

Oxford

Blue Skies Thinking Needed

Competing and surviving in a highly technological, fast changing and globalised economy increasingly dictates that universities and institutes step up and generate economic returns on their research. But although there have been a few notable exceptions at New Zealand universities, we continue to underperform in the commercialisation of new scientific knowledge into value generating products and services that drive economic growth. So if disruptive innovation lies at the core of economic development, how can we better reconcile commercialisation with the core purpose of our institutions?

Firstly, there are some valid arguments in favour of the separation of commerce from academia. Normative, collectivist elements of academic science as a social system, along with the autonomous nature of university culture, seem to sit uncomfortably with the motivations of profit seeking firms that wish to take ownership of intellectual property. Claims of IP ownership can lead to fears of diminishing the scientific commons, which would be detrimental to the collegial and collaborative nature of science and therefore hinder the very process that will drive future discoveries.

Furthermore, commercialising technology research is risky and accommodating new and developing fields of commercially focused science takes up resources that might be used for other teaching and research, impacting the core mission of universities. We have already witnessed closures and staff reductions within arts and humanities faculties where commercial outcomes are less of a focus. There’s also a danger that high tech institutes established in emergent fields become impenetrable and elitist silos of specialist knowledge open to only a few, at a time when we should be striving for greater equity. Are there other societal factors at play that dampen success?

Patent filings data is sometimes quoted as an indicator of “innovativeness” in the context of economic development. New Zealand sits at the lower end of the table, but not because it is a small economy. Countries with relatively small populations such as Finland, Switzerland and Israel lead the pack. In New Zealand total expenditure on research and development as a proportion of GDP has been increasing in recent years, but continues to lag behind other developed countries. Investment rose to 1.37% in 2018. This compares to an average research intensity figure of 2.38% across all OECD countries, ranking New Zealand 21st out of 34 nations [Statistics NZ — 2018]. So whilst the size of an economy does not fully explain the innovativeness of a nation, the level of commitment to research and development investment certainly plays a part.

Approximately half of that R&D investment originates from publicly funded sources. With government investment comes an expectation that tax payer funded academic research will provide a “return on science” or economic and social benefits to society. The challenge then is to generate meaningful commercial outcomes, that do not undermine the core missions of teaching and research. There are a great many reasons to do so, not the least of which is our ability to fund future health, education and welfare needs. As a nation heavily reliant upon commodity based income we must gravitate towards higher added value goods and services to ensure the future economic wellbeing of our society. Developing an ecosystem approach to cultivating innovation is a key part of this journey.

For example, benefits in cultivating university-industry ties become amplified due to network effects and serendipitous conversations around the humble water cooler (or perhaps kombucha fridge these days). This “innovation ecosystem” approach has benefitted a number of scientific fields. For example the emergence of biotechnology as both a science and business from MIT and other institutions clustered within the Boston area. Commercialisation of new knowledge can also speed up solving complex social, health and environmental problems that might not otherwise be addressed, attracting both government and private sector funding into academia.

The global pandemic has also accelerated the need for scientific innovation. Previous hard won gains against poverty and improvements in social equity have been wiped out by pandemic related economic carnage. In addition, because of growing urgency in relation to addressing environmental challenges, there is forecast to be a vast migration of capital away from polluting industries over the next two or three decades. This green transition will create enormous opportunities for scientific organisations operating at the leading edge of cleantech, renewable energy, low carbon construction and regenerative agriculture, for example.

Embedded within entrepreneurship centres of research, university innovation labs such as ThincLab at the University of Canterbury are important intermediaries in the cycle of innovation and a key part of a vibrant ecosystem that engages with a wide array of supporting players to ensure the success of spin-off companies, whilst at the same time respecting the scholarship that underpins scientific discovery.

This article was first published on the ThincLab blog and formed the basis of my presentation to the Food, Fibre and Agritech Supernode Challenge 2021 cohort.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest, advisor at ThincLab within the University of Canterbury Centre for Entrepreneurship and principal at GeniusNet Research. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest. Paul is a co-author of the Entrepreneurship Manifesto 2020.

Connecting Canterbury

DandelionFountain1 After nearly a decade of rebuilding, much of the baseline physical infrastructure needed for the regeneration of Christchurch is now in place. There’s still a lot more to do of course, but there’s now some breathing space to think about working on social infrastructure as well. Developing a vibrant and better connected local ecosystem will be the key to unlocking a wider pipeline of innovation across Canterbury.

Building a more connected innovation community also demonstrably aligns with the city-wide Prosperity Framework established by economic development agency ChristchurchNZ in 2018. This framework underpins business attraction and capability building activities across the city for the following decade and is strongly informed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the New Zealand government Treasury Living Standards Framework. Environmental sustainability, inclusion, scalability and confidence are therefore viewed as pillars of a recovering and strengthening city economy and are encapsulated within the adjacent Supernodes Strategy.

The Supernodes Strategy, in its current form, has a focus on four designated areas of Food/Fibre/Agritech, Aerospace, HealthTech and High Tech services. All of these areas are obviously predicated upon a well connected ecosystem that is strongly underpinned by world class capabilities in software, high tech manufacturing and research. But it is less clear where important and enabling innovation infrastructure itself sits within the strategy. For example, platform based digital services and game offerings are amongst the highest value and fastest growing companies globally. Should we consider creating a local niche to include these sectors?

The Supernode strategy also speaks strongly about inclusion, especially in cultivating diversity of thinking and about better engaging young people with the business community. The strategy seeks to achieve progress through “a collaborative approach between education, industry and the government…to ensure a prosperous future for the city and the region”. So actively building these bridges is a mandated priority.

Resilient infrastructure and fostering sustainable and inclusive innovation incidentally also forms the basis of SDG Goal 9, a global commitment that central government signed us up to. Supporting small business growth and facilitating investments in research and development are fundamental to this goal. This is especially salient in the context of a post-quake, post-Covid economic rebuild in Christchurch. So there are many brilliant reasons to foster connectivity across the innovator community in Canterbury. One of the strongest arguments for doing so is that there is plenty of untapped capacity, unlike in some of our other main centre cities.

Pandemic related disruption has unfortunately hindered community-building activities throughout much of 2020, but has ironically amplified the need for it more than ever. Community minded responses have thus far averted a public health crisis. In the meantime people in education and business found ways to keep working together. Maintaining and building robust, collaborative communities is more important than ever in the disrupted, remote working and rapidly changing world to which we must adapt.

Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, a recently exited co-founder of a New Zealand based technology venture, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest and principal at GeniusNet Research. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest. Paul is a co-author of the Entrepreneurship Manifesto 2020.

Image credit: Renea Mackie