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Posts Tagged Market validation

Lightning Lab startups ask – ‘where’s the money’? Peter Kerr May 21

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Lightning Lab 2013 saw nine startups pitch their digital products to would-be investors last week, seeking expansion capital for ideas that 12 weeks before mostly existed on paper.

The Wellington Demo Day saw highly polished presentations, with clear development plans and just as clear ‘here’s how we and our investors are going to make money’ to about 300 people at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre. About half the audience were financiers.

Any investment secured goes to the next stage of development and expansion into global markets.

My initial underlying thought was jealousy.

Why? Because the participants have obviously learned so much.

Tui Te Hau, CEO of Wellington startup incubator Creative HQ up summed this rationale better than I can.

“Lightning Lab is turning out 30 entrepreneurs with a harder edge and keener and smarter drive to succeed than many. How far they go is up to them, but these companies are 12 weeks old and they already have more scars than most get in several years.”

These nine companies were whittled from 87 applications to LL late last year, and each received $6000 per head from a set of founding investors. By being part of a three month intensive acceleration programme, their digital concepts have been validated, built and established with early customers.

The startups have been mentored by local and international advisers, faced hard deadlines in growth targets and a structured model for accelerating early stage business growth based on international best practice.

When Te Hau talks about scars, she’s not exaggerating – but obtaining them so quickly and with the ability to ask advice such as “what should we do now” in such a concentrated manner – is something so valuable it really can’t be priced.

What is patently clear is that the 30 participants, and their wider networks, have had such an injection of entrepreneurial spirit and possibilities that multiplier spinoffs and benefits can only result for Wellington and New Zealand.

Put another way; this programme, with its hand-holding, arse-kicking and question-asking intensiveness will create a virtuous circle of increasing wealth.

And sure, like all of us, these startups have, and will make mistakes.

But, they know what needs to be done to get back on track, or alternatively how to fail-fast (and then get on with another project).

Because the Demo Day was asking for money, what can be reported publicly is limited.

Suffice to say that (and you’d have to imagine that the mentoring has been also strong in this area) the investment dollars being asked for by the startups seemed reasonable and appropriate.

Many of the companies had potential exponential growth rates, but realism ruled.

It is now up to the individual companies themselves to reveal if or what investment(s) have been made in them – and as this becomes known Lightning Lab will have its own raison d’etre validated.

For the record, those presenting were:

LearnKo – delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia, harnessing Australasian tutors, training them and providing them with content to deliver through an online classroom

Publons – platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build a reputation for their contributions. An alternative to the extremely slow, expensive and closed status quo of the past 300 years of academic publishing

Adeez – specialist mobile marketing platform, enabling brands and their agencies to increase their ROI on mobile marketing

Expander – tracking and analytics platform that protects brands by providing them with powerful tools to combat counterfeit, while connecting manufacturers and consumers

teamisto – turn a typical business sponsorship donation to an amateur sports club or team into an effective advertising channel with measurable results

Questo – works with organisations by providing a platform to create activities with incentives and rewards to engage their visitors. A mobile app and analytics engine provides the ability to track, measure and evaluate their visitors’ behaviour

promoki – social media platform that gamifies photo and video contests. Help brands co-create advertising campaigns with their audience and distribute crowd-filled media across multiple social networks

Kidsgomobile – software device to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. Tool that notifies parents if their child engages in potentially risky phone behaviour and helps them resolve these issues

WIP – platform that enables professional video makers to share their work-in-progress videos with their team and clients to gather precise and meaningful feedback

Without doubt, some of these startups will go on to become much larger businesses. Without doubt too, most of them would not have got to this ‘go’ position without Lightning Lab.

The learning has been immense, and a thumbs up to those investors and sponsors who put their hands in their pockets from the get-go to kick the whole thing off.

Applications for the next Lightning Lab 2014 will open in September this year.


Problemsourcing initiative gets the academic once-over Peter Kerr Apr 24

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Open innovation and crowdsourcing are two relatively recent ways of finding solutions to (often) technical challenges experienced by companies.

There’s particular issues which need resolving when using the power of the crowd; along with the hope that someone has a usable answer.

Victoria (University) Business School in Wellington has, in the academic way that adheres to such publications’ rules, identified many of the pros and cons of open innovation and crowd sourcing in a hot-off-the-press paper recently published in ‘Technology Innovation Management Review’, see here.

Sally Davenport, Stephen Cummings, Urs Daellenbach and Charles Campbell have turned open innovation and crowd sourcing on its head with their paper and exploration; ‘Problemsourcing: Local Open Innovation for R&D Organizations’.

They’ve coined the term ‘problemsourcing’ – and given the rigour with which peer review is maintained – you have to presume they’re first.

“Problemsourcing is akin to crowdsourcing in reverse in that the open call initiator, not the crowd, holds the problem-solving capabilities, and the crowd-members offer not solutions but promising problems that would create substantial value if solved.”

The paper uses (the late) Industrial Research Ltd’s 2009 initiative ‘What’s Your Problem New Zealand’ as the model around which its authors explore problemsolving as a new open innovation practice – and in particular how the WYPNZ? competition for $1 million of research spending addresses eight key issues.
• Project delays
• Solution quality
• Ambiguous liability
• Temporary relationship
• Professional challenge
• Identity clash
• Exploitation and reputation effects
• Losers disenfranchised

The writers conclude that the success of WYPNZ? at this stage is measured primarily by the range of high-quality problems that were proposed as well as the sheer number of companies (in a small country) that, by submitting problems, indicated an interest in participating in such a process.

They point out: “With crowdsourcing, innovative activity is distributed somewhere in the crowd, but with problemsourcing, it remains firmly within the boundaries of the R&D organization, which we propose mitigates many of the risks and pitfalls associated with typical crowdsourcing initiatives.”

IRL ensured that its selected challenge had a fit with its own science and research resources, could make a difference to the country (and its economic health) and had a degree of sexiness (sticK, not Victoria Business School’s terminology) that would resonate with the general public and business alike. Resene Paints, and its wish to create a sustainable-base paint was the ultimate winner.

As Callaghan Innovation comes into being (and taking note of BusinessDesk journalist Pattrick Smellie’s recent article suggesting we give CI a chance to find its feet) the Davenport et al paper would be good reading for its people.

WYPNZ? was one of a number of IRL initiatives that lifted science and research beyond the white lab coat concept.

It spurred some companies which had never thought of R&D as a part of their business, to reconsider. It also brought (as the paper points out) many, many more partnering research opportunities IRL’s way.

WYPNZ? also dovetailed strongly, as you’d expect being its instigator, with IRL’s strengths.

But most of all it was fun.

And that’s an ‘f’ word we should allow ourselves, along with another one – failure.


Lightning Labs shows off its first flowers of startup blooming Peter Kerr Apr 10

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Lightning Labs, a lean startup hub of selected neophyte companies located for three months on Wellington’s The Terrace, gave a ‘where we’re at, what we’ve learned’ quickfire talks recently.

The fullhouse (dozens on the waiting list), heard how the nine IT-oriented businesses are going, how they’ve changed and pivoted (or spivoted as Questo described their 360° return to where they began) and how they’re achieving product-market fit.

All are using the lean startup methodology and being heavily mentored in the expectation that many will attract new and additional investment at a formal pitch session Demo Day at Te Papa on May 15.

The nine startups, whittled down from an original 87 applications, have received up to $18,000 for the three month internship cum building platform. LL’s organisers, Dave Moskovitz, Creative HQ and many others describe it as being a means to build a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem across New Zealand, and have modified America’s TechStars model for Kiwi sensibilities.

Lighntning Lab is sponsored by CreativeHQ, MBIE, ninetwenty recruitment, The Wellington Company, Weta Digital, FX Netowrks, TradeMe and CityLink.

It is all part of, in sticK’s opinion, a maturing and reality check on the difficult feat of turning an idea into a product or service that someone will buy. That, or creating a fast-failure so an entrepreneur can get on with another project that does have market potential.

The three month intensive is divided into thirds (with participants currently halfway through):

· First month –validation & mentor bombardment (asking questions, testing hypotheses)
· Second month – build a structure
· Third month – prepare for investment….and beyond

One interesting feature, is a weekly group evaluation of everyone’s progress and ranking (which varies). This ever-changing ranking graphically shows how well teams are considered to be going.

For the record, the presentations and brief explanation of the startups are: (The companies and original market intent can be found here.

A point to note is the change in description of what the startups consider to be their market, and/or problem they’re solving).

Questo! – platform to connect parents and their children and share photos (in particular)

KidsGoMobile – a means to make children’s smartphone use safer by enabling parents to have an overview of who they’re connecting

withPromoki – a collaborative media project to use crowdsourcing to make and tell stories (particularly around brands)

Teamisto – social media platform for grass root sports teams, allowing them to interact with and provide value to local businesses that may wish to be sponsors

Expander – tracking and analytics platform to protect brands, first aimed at NZ food and beverage productsMyBuy – mobile marketing platform particularly aimed at SME’s

Publons – building a way for academics to publish articles without having to use a journal (publication)

WIP – cloud-based collaboration tool for film-making and editing

LearnCOACH – platform to allow one-on-one, conversational english tuition to non-english students

As programme director Dan Khan says, “the lean startup methodology is a set of very commonsense techniques.”

“What is also really important is the importance of a vision – defined in a way that allows a company, when pivoting, to remain within that vision,” he says.

To have such a vision, a company needs a good idea of what problem it is trying to solve, and that there’s a big enough pain point to provide a product that customers will love.

Roll on (and even role on) May 15 – the proof of the (investment) pudding for Lightning Labs first cohort of graduates!


Callaghan Innovation – building the plane while they fly it Peter Kerr Mar 26

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There’s a term that’s particularly loved by IT-oriented start-ups, ‘building the plane while you’re flying it’.

The business case put forward for and by Callaghan Innovation doesn’t use the term.

However, that’s what I interpret from the ‘Purpose of this document’ comment on its fourth page. (It follows an earlier sentence – Callaghan Innovation’s role does not currently exist in the New Zealand innovation system, and it is in effect a “start-up” organisation. [CI’s quotation marks]).

A bit of a pre-amble later, the document goes on to state:

Recognising these uncertainties, the draft business case submitted to Ministers on 13 December 2012 provided a development path with high levels of optionality and choices in the short to medium term, Callaghan Innovation’s investment in new tools and instruments being made in line with progress in this discovery process, and demonstrated results from pilot and service testing.

Now, perhaps unfairly, this can be interpreted as ‘we’re making it up as we go along’.

But, given:

1. The stealth-like, non-consultative manner an originally proposed Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) morphed into an all-singing, all-dancing CI
2. The fact that the CI establishment board chair (Sue Suckling) reported only and directly to minister-of-everything Steven Joyce, and
3. The lack of any (even loose) overseas model on which CI might be seen to be based,

Then there’s very little other conclusion that can be drawn.

I’m sure too that in his private-sector dealings, Steven Joyce would’ve never okayed the setting up of a new business venture before a business plan/case had been developed, but that’s what’s happening with the allocation of $166 million to be spent by CI over the next four years.

For all that, no one is going to be anti CI’s strapline ‘we accelerate commercialisation of New Zealand’s innovation’.

It is just that for all its 65 pages of business case proposal, we’re not that much wiser.

In fact, you have to wonder if recently announced chief executive Dr Mary Quin quite knows what she’s letting herself in for in taking up the new role.

In the absence of an actual nationally integrated science and innovation plan, the danger is that there’s no coherent sense of direction for our country.

At least (with a background as an engineer in materials science), Mary Quin isn’t an academic or professional manager.

Her recent experience in managing the 2,800 person USA support services company NANA Management Services, jointly owned by Alaska’s indigenous Inupiat people will no doubt serve her well in her new role.

From NZ Inc’s point of view, how and to what, she moulds an extremely amorphous Callaghan Innovation will be crucial for our country’s future.

Equally, managing relationships between CI’s chair, minister, stakeholders, researchers and the industry it is supposed to be serving will be no insignificant feat.

So, in welcoming you to the new role Dr Quin, you could do much worse that reviewing the ATI blueprints put forward by the now extinct Industrial Research Ltd.

At least those blueprints provide some idea of how to keep the CI plane in the air.

P.S. As a number of readers pointed out, Dr Michael J Kelly (ex-pat Kiwi now at Cambridge University, and former undergraduate colleague of the late Prof Sir Paul Callaghan) was interviewed by National Radio’s Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon on March 13. (CI chair Sue Suckling was also interviewed at the same time). One of Kelly’s main points is that there’s been no debate about how to structure the new organisation……and an inherent danger it becomes a mere broker of technical knowledge. The podcast can be found here.


Wellington Startup Weekend well pitched Peter Kerr Feb 26

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According to John Holt, the brainchild behind the San Francisco located Kiwi Landing Pad, the final pitch presentations at the Wellington Startup Weekend were better than 75% of those he’s seen in the USA.

Given that those State-side entrepreneurs are pitching for real money for ideas they’ve been working on for months, the former director of Sonar 6 reckons the fledgling companies in Wellington did a fantastic job of getting their ideas across.

The WSW attendees only had 54 hours to prepare their pitches, from an absolute standing start.

Unfortunately, I missed the first and winning startup presentation by WagonShare, a web-oriented means for mobile home owners to make a bit of money by renting out their vehicle. In New Zealand, as in the USA, these campervans and caravans are usually sitting around unused – but would be perfect for rental.

Apparently WagonShare were the unanimous winners – evident in that the judges didn’t need to spend too much time deciding their favourite new business.

The other 11 pitches showed varying degrees of market validation or ways of assessing whether there is a market for their perceived product or service. A couple of the teams pivoted their business on the basis of such market assessment during the two and a half days of intense development – something that could and should happen during the creation of any new venture.

The pitches that took my fancy were:

mySmartGrid

  • App/web-based way and tool for consumers to make better informed electricity use decisions
  • A bit of gamification, a bit of compare yourself with other individuals and interest groups
  • Apparently, PowerShop and other electricity retailers expressed interest in being part of such an offering

eMammogram

  • A means/way to standardise the images from mammograms taken across years to see change/difference in breast tissue
  • Could sit alongside Matakina Technology (which converts any digital breast mammogram into quantitative numbers in which tissue properties are characterised and differentiated)

Arrangr

  • Indian-subcontinent oriented web-based matchmaking service based on Facebook’s friend recommendations

STVA (SmartTVart)

  • Marketplace for digital art images
  • A way to protect and make money for artists whose work is displayed on a screen

As a couple of WSW mentors both mentioned, the idea of the event isn’t necessarily to come up with a new idea or company that drives through to the market – though that’s not considered bad.

More, it is to inspire, educate and provide a template for entrepreneurs and would-be startups to have a go.

One thing Startup Weekends do really well is demonstrate, vividly, the value of a team and individuals’ skills within that environment.

As Melissa Clark-Reynolds said recently in a sticK blog, trying to do everything yourself in a fledgling company poised for growth just slows everything down and is easily sub-optimal.

In other words, teams work.

And, on a final note, a piece of WSW irony.

Even before the WSW started, the organisers felt that they were a bit light on the number of participants expected to turn up with developer skills (people who can computer code).

This was compounded (for the other teams at least), when – during the phase that the initial 12 winners have teams formed around them – many developers opted to join the 3Dmakersworld.com team.

You probably can’t call it the law of unintended consequences, but it is something similar!


‘Foolproof’ writer to study difference between new business intent and reality Peter Kerr Feb 20

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Jenny Douche is going back to 'school' to boost her entrepreneurial skills

Jenny Douche is going back to ‘school’ to boost her entrepreneurial skills

The writer of ‘Foolproof’ a tome about how to find and test great business opportunities through market validation is off writing books – at least for a while.

In a previous incarnation, Wellingtonian Jenny Douché put out a series of books under the ‘Smarter than Jack’ label.

These collections of stories, about smart animals, raised $440,000 for worldwide, animal-connected charities. The NZ SPCA earned about $120,000. Douché’s venture into publishing followed an initial (and one of the last) cadetship at Wellington Newspapers followed by her first entrepreneurial venture which was as a pet photographer.

“I quickly realised what I really liked about the business was the partnerships, the business side of it, it was not really the photography itself,” she says.

Douché developed the idea for Smarter than Jack during a four-year stint at Telecom as a marketing/communications specialist and while doing her MBA. “I wanted to create a scalable business that I was really passionate about, and one that would make a big difference to the animal community”.

She sold the Smarter than Jack label and concept in 2007, and after having her first child, had the opportunity to work for Grow Wellington and to manage its ‘Activate’ programme for up and coming startup businesses.

When that 12 month contract finished, she decided to write another book called ‘Baby Gone’. This was another compilation of stories about infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth and infant death.

“They were stories about the months after the actual event, life after it, coping,” she says. “The objective of creating the book was to help educate the medical community and to help families find solace in knowing that they are not alone on their unplanned and painful journeys.”

She got a sponsor onboard through Trilogy’s Catherine deGroot, and this contributed to the donation of over 3000 copies to people such as midwives, nurses, GPs and to support groups.

Following the arrival of a second child, and playing to her project-orientation strengths, saw her come up with the idea for Fool Proof.

As well as her own business/entrepreneurial experiences, Douché also had been helping put startups through the market validation process. Creating a resource for others seemed to her a useful exercise.

She’s self-published the book – but now has ‘orders’ from her husband not to write another until their current three-year-old daughter starts school.

So what’s she going to do to keep her creative juices flowing – a PhD!

Based on startup businesses that have a documented business model (from say an incubation process), “what is fascinating is how they change during the early growth period,” she says.

“What is it that people say and think they’re going to do, compared to what actually happens. What influences those things to happen? I want to understand why things turned out the way they did.”

Won’t be much writing there will there?


Callaghan Innovation – wishing it all the best…..but Peter Kerr Jan 25

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I hope I’m wrong about Callaghan Innovation, and for our country’s and industry’s sake that it is a roaring success when it stumbles into life on Feb 1.

But, the portents aren’t good – and as a solution in search of a need, instead of the other way round – we’ll end up with a couple of years of bureaucratic confusion before eventually going for a form of the Advanced Technology Institute as originally proposed by IRL.

In the meantime we’ll have a Callaghan Innovation Agency (CIA), and all the bumbling that’s implied in that.

Why the glass half empty viewpoint?

Among the things that have happened, the common knowledge at IRL and further afield, have been the following happenings.

  • An ATI Establishment Board (before it morphed into CI), whose chair, Sue Suckling, reported only and directly to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment super minister, Steven Joyce. Not through MBIE (who weren’t involved), only to Joyce
  • A chief science adviser (Sir Peter Gluckman) who hasn’t been able to talk to Joyce
  • An October command that no member of the ATI establishment team or board was to have anything to with the senior management of IRL. (Odd, presumably you’d expect such people to have the best knowledge/overview of requirements to promote high value manufacturing)
  • An as yet non-public business plan; and no idea how any sort of transition/transformation takes place between IRL to Callaghan Innovation
  • A management and governance structure that merely transfers the original ATI establishment team to new positions – let’s call it jobs for the girls and boys…..never, ever a good look
  • Total and utter disregard for transparency, democracy, clarity of (desired) outcome – and the trust that goes with those processes

In short, what we have with Callaghan Innovation is a secret, ill-conceived creation of a model that’s been disproven overseas.

We don’t have anything like Taiwain’s ITRI – which has an extremely strong industry/research group hug and development of science/engineering platforms that will strategically support a future.

Nor Switzerland’s, nor Singapore’s, nor especially Denmark – who’s research institute’s must be wondering how we got so far away from their own model.

Now, Joyce is well-known for forming a point of view and pulling all the levers to achieve an outcome – it’s something you can do in business (more or less).

How much has his notion that ‘innovation’ (and let’s not even begin to try and define it) is a command and control activity intersected with the law of unintended consequences?

Wow, we’ve ended up with ‘tell me exactly what it’s meant to do’ Callaghan Innovation?

CI will be much more hands-on from Joyce’s point of view, but I’m afraid Steven, that’s not how innovation works.

CI as a model is much more sand in the gearbox.

Whether it is because her background’s as an economist, but Sue Suckling’s viewpoint seems to be that inventors/innovators/ideas people have had trouble accessing the IRL (and other university/CRI) brains who could help with their industry challenge. We’ll call it a supply problem.

That’s not the case – anyone with even half and idea can relatively easily, today, get the help and R&D expertise they need.

Providing a 0800 ‘Callaghan Innovation’ number addresses a problem that doesn’t exist. It will simply be another bureaucratic layer of frustration for science and industry.

But, prove me wrong CI – I’ll be happy to admit my error.


Change by chance, by design or by stealth – Callaghan Innovation’s ‘birth’ far from democratic Peter Kerr Dec 20

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Hypothetically speaking, say we’re all on the same page and all wanting more to happen around the innovation space – you know, spend $X here and see a clear $Yreturn there.

Say too there’s been a suggestion for an Advanced Technology Institute – somewhat replicated on overseas models – a better, faster link between industry needs and the country’s ability to provide clever science and tech answers.

You carry on down a path which would see the broad-brush IRL proposals for the ATI begin to be put in place.

Then, a bit down the track, going back to a private-industry business model that allows you to pull a lever here and you observe a result there, you think, ‘nah, let’s change the way we do things totally, fundamentally’.

Hypothetically speaking, you’ve got this ATI creation thing happening.

Why not use that process as a cover, as a way to bring in a new system – one that nobody had any idea was being proposed in the first place.

That would be a nice, subterfuge-type way to do it.

At the same time front what you’re still calling an ATI-creation with a person who only reports to you.

Of course, having the ATI Establishment Unit only report to the Minister direct, with no involvement of the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (the former Ministry of Science and Innovation) whatsoever also avoids that messy consulting thing too, as does not talking to actual industry.

While we’re speaking theoretically too, we might as well put a rule in place that no one from the Establishment Unit is allowed to talk to, or have anything whatsoever to do with, the senior management of Industrial Research Ltd.

At the same time, don’t put up any concrete idea of what…..(oh yeh, now we’ll call it Callaghan Innovation for that feel-good and distraction factor)…..the new body, structure or whatever looks like, nor what its purpose will actually be.

In other words provide no idea of what CI’s ‘value proposition’ will be. Remember, we’re working to a model that exists in someone’s head. Which in itself is kind of ironic, because the first core part of any innovation (no matter how it is defined) is market validation.

And just to make it really interesting and infuriating, say that all will be revealed, and only can be revealed (though there’s no reason why this has to be) on February 1.

That way it’s very difficult for the rest of us to object to something early, when we have absolutely no idea what we’re objecting to, (or alternatively endorsing).

This is another way of saying, speaking hypothetically, that the CI which is being forced upon us essentially in the blink of an eye, totally without consultation, is not democracy in action.

Steven Joyce may think that running the country is like running a company – but plenty of ministers have slipped up through assuming that. ……the law of unintended consequences comes to mind.

Just because a (super) minister wants something to happen, and has powers, doesn’t mean that they should be unilaterally applied.

The rumour is (and again, nobody knows) Callaghan Innovation is to be established as a Crown Agency – something that gives effect to Government policy (see Wikipedia)

Mr Joyce may feel that simply establishing such a beast means his desire to make more money from science/tech investments will come to pass at his command.

But, given its genesis, a Callaghan Innovation (Agency) will be just as secretive, bureaucratic and self-centred as its more famous C.I.A. namesake – and be regarded just as warmly by scientists, industry and the public as a whole.

By creating the CIA in such an underhand way, without consultation, excluding some of the main brains behind the original ATI concept, and telling us nothing, any potential reform of our innovation ecosystem has been put behind two years at least.

That is the time it will take to realise, yet again, a specialised Advanced Technology Institute, working directly to and with industry, and not through a stultifying encumbrance like the CIA, is what the country does need.

Now, apparently too, the CIA business case is meant to be signed off by Cabinet on Friday.

I bet there’s some heroic numbers in that.

Not that they’ll have been stress tested.

Not that anyone with a modicum of experience in the innovation area will have had an opportunity to go, ‘whew, not sure about that assumption, those figures.’

Not that any of us have had the chance to question.

But perhaps you’re right Mr Joyce, keep us in the dark, no one will be any the wiser.

It is almost Christmas and holidays are around the corner….we can simply steam into the new CIA mess that’s been created early next year.


We are the picture that a child draws of a farm Peter Kerr Dec 18

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A child draws a picture of a farm.

The sun is shining, the water is clean, the animals are happy.

A question could be, ‘What is the name of that picture?’

Our farms, done correctly, are that picture. There’s a heck of a lot of science to validate it as well.

But, like the picture, we’ve never given a name to what and how we do things.

Without a name, we’re undifferentiated from factory farming.

However, the moment we give our responsible pastoralism method a name, then we provide ourselves with a frame for the offer we make to the world.

It is a frame of reference, of expectation, of delivery, of allowing a consumer to connect heart and head for the piece of meat they may be thinking of buying.

It also provides a frame on which to do much more applied science – get the special bits, add lots of margin, create more value from the raw materials, reinvent products.

(This also applies to our forestry, fishing and other biological resources – our strengths, upon which we can build, make much more money).

Because what we want to do is have a relationship with consumers – they too ‘own’ our pasture Harmonies method. By naming it, we can have a conversation, with them, with other world farmers, with the supply chain, with the rest of New Zealand.

And wouldn’t it be nice to be able to positively yarn, rather than always having to be reactive.

Imagine too the competition and labelling opportunities from having children paint pictures and/or come to somewhere/something that is already named!

It all would happen by naming our story, taking control of our destiny.

Or would that be just too simple?


If Callaghan Innovation is the answer – remind me again what was the question? Peter Kerr Dec 14

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Well, surely I’m not the only one surprised that what was to be the establishment of an Advanced Technology Institute – or a supercharged IRL – somewhat on the model of Taiwan’s ITRI, is instead going to end up as a revamped Tech NZ.

That certainly hasn’t been communicated in its four month gestation – in fact precious little has been publicly stated….apart from some imaginative words of why and how the moniker Callaghan Innovation came into being.

In fact, communication has been woeful – to say the least.

Now maybe CI is going to be more than a funding vehicle, and move beyond the current Tech NZ role.

Maybe it will address those routes to market, partnering and capital issues that bedevil the turning of an idea into a saleable reality (and success).

Maybe it is what the country needs.

But – if ‘we’ had known CI was going to be an all singing all dancing affair, shouldn’t the process have been a heck of a lot more transparent, in-depth and more question and answering?

After all, this is as equally as big a change as took place 20 years ago when the DSIR and MAFTech was morphed into the CRI model.

That process was carried out over a reasonable timeframe and out in the open.

What we’re going to end up with here is a fait accompli, a model based on a muddle. (As an aside, precisely the type of thing the late Sir Paul Callaghan would have been aghast to have his name associated with).

If the (flawed) thinking was that NZ industry and people with ideas didn’t know what door(s) to go through to get science and tech answers or help – and CI is the result – you have to suspect entirely the wrong problem has been addressed……in secret.

Again, the trouble is we’ve all been kept in the dark, when we don’t have to be – we’re all on the same ship here.

Saying things like we can’t tell you anything until the legislation is in place, is a circular non-argument. That all will be revealed on Feb. 1 is equally invalid.

The approach, the cloak-and-daggerness is totally unwarranted.

So, based on gut-feel as much as anything, I make the following observations.

How will Callaghan Innovation NOT just be another layer of innovation bureaucracy – divorced from both the science/engineering and the market – which is as much a hindrance as a help to those who need it?

Where does this place an ever-improving initiative such as KiwiNet? This is the 18 month old CRI/university commercialisation initiative that self-formed after the disastrous non-creation of the National Network of Commercialisation Centres through the then Ministry of Science & Innovation.

Why would any person with an idea still not go straight to the science or engineering establishment that actually has the capability, rather than going through what will undoubtedly be an officialdom-onerous process through the CI?

Finally, sure (without even attempting to define the hackneyed term) ‘innovation’ needs to be done better in NZ.

But the way CI’s coming into existence, the huge risk is it is change by accident rather than change by design.

And no one is allowed to argue.


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