New Zealand’s innovation ecosystem

Shaun HendyMacDiarmid Institute for AdvancedMaterials and Nanotechnology

@hendysh shaun.hendy@vuw.ac.nzsciblogs.co.nz/a-measure-of-science

Sir Paul Callaghan (1947-2012)

“Sir Paul Callaghan stands alongside Maurice Wilkins, Alan MacDiarmid, Ernest Rutherford and William Pickering as one of New Zealand's greatest scientists"

Deputy Prime Minister, Bill English

Japan

Greece Spain

Iceland

Canada USA

IrelandUKSweden

Italy

Germany Belgium

France

Austria

Netherlands

Finland

SwitzerlandAustralia

2005

Do we choose to be poor?

New Zealand

0

$100,000

$200,000

$300,000

$400,000

$500,000

Needed for current

per capita GDP

200,000100,000 300,000

Fonterra

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare

Total NZ Manufacturing

Tourism

Rev

enue

per

em

ploy

ee

FTE of employment

NZ Manufacturing Exports

Food manufacturing

Wine

http://mash.hashbang.co.nz/

Do we choose to be poor?

Innovate?

Source: triadic patents, OECD

Philip McCann, New Zealand Economic Papers, 43: 3, 279-314 (2009)

My approach: data

Country ExportInventor

Applicant

Patent

Scientificarticle

Authors

The world is not flat: patents

Bigger cities produce morepatents per capita

Source: OECD REGPAT database

The world is not flat: scientific articles

Innovators are better connected in

bigger cities

Ecosystems

Ecosystemsare complex systems that contain a few large players and lots of small players

Enquist, Brown & West, Nature 395, 163-165(1998)

Innovation Ecosystems

Ecosystemsare complex systems that contain a few large players and lots of small players

OECD REGPAT database

2006

More than 1300 inventors in Nokia’s largest connectedcomponent

Nokia’s inventor network

More than 450 Finnish companies in Nokia’s patent network

Nokia’s applicant network

Innovation ecosystems

Ecosystems contain a few large players and lots of small players

Intuitive surgical is embedded in the largest network we have found

• it has more than 20,000 individual inventors

• it stretches fromSan Francisco to San Diego

• it involves a large number of

small to medium companies

• We released the Innovation Ecosystem Map in April

• The map geo-locates inventors and the links between inventors in Google Earthsciblogs.co.nz/a-measure-of-science

Innovation Ecosystems: New Zealand

NZs largest inventor network

• 450 inventors• 14 NZ companies• 4 CRIs• 3 Universities

Innovation Ecosystems: New Zealand

Economic indicators

Using revealed comparative advantage we can identify New Zealand’s strengths on the map of product space (black dots)

6%13%

36%30%

5%10%

Social sciences

Plant, animal, agricultural and environmental science

Physical sciences and engineering

Medical sciences

Mathematics and computer science

Biological sciences

8%

33%

17%

28%

5% 9%

Innovation Ecosystems: Biomass

BERD

The biomass in an innovation ecosystem is R&D spending

A City of Four Million People?

• Economic geography 101: If New Zealand was a city of four million people, our

GDP per capita would exceed that of Australia

• Can we learn to act like a city of four million?

A City of Four Million People?

• The industrial revolution was driven by specialisation and increasing returns to scale in manufacturing

• The knowledge revolution is being driven by similar effects in research and development

• In the future, research and development will be undertaken by large multi-disciplinary teams of specialised researchers

• New Zealand must embrace open research and data exchange, across Institutes, companies and regions

• As a small country, to build these teams we will need to drive down the spatial transaction costs in generating knowledge

A City of Four Million People: the CoREs

Auckland

Wellington

Dunedin

Christchurch

300 km

Massey University

Victoria UniversityIndustrial Research Ltd

GNS Science

Canterbury University

Otago University

Auckland University

Palmerston Nth

A City of Four Million People: the MacDiarmid Institute

A City of Four Million People: the MacDiarmid Institute

2002-04 2007-09

Source: ISI Web of Science

A City of Four Million People: my wishlist

• Organisations will need to collaborate: We need to promote a culture of openness and information exchange

• Ideas need to find other ideas: We need better data management!

• People need to find other people: We need better tools for identifying expertise and IP

Summary

• Bibliometrics– S. C. Hendy “New Zealand’s bibliometric record in research and

development: 1990-2008”, New Zealand Science Review 67 56-59 (2010)

• Patents– S. C. Hendy and C. Sissons “Innovators, Innovation and Increasing

Returns to Scale: Solving New Zealand's Productivity Paradox”, New Zealand Science Review 68 28-32 (2011)

• Products– D. O’Neale, X. Y. Zhang and S. C. Hendy, in preparation