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Posts Tagged sustainability

National Science Challenge winners underwhelm Peter Kerr May 14

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There’s only one word really to describe the winners of the National Science Challenge – ‘wow’ writ small.

Or, perhaps it is just me that is completely underwhelmed by the announcement of 10 research areas that can comfortably be binned as business as usual.

Though, pity the team tasked with coming up with an overview of the NSC considering there were only 200 entries from greater New Zealand on where and what we should research.

Right from the get-go the challenge lacked direction, had a sort of what is it all about non-rationale.

As chairman of the NSC, the prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman is obliged to put a positive spin on the challenge.

As he commented recently:

“The intent is to invigorate the science system, allowing it to become more collaborative and strategic in its approach.”

As the Tui billboards say,

‘Yeh, right’

But firstly, a reminder of the challenges selected.

  • Aging well – harnessing science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life
  • A better start – improving the potential of young New Zealanders to have a healthy and successful life
  • Healthier lives – research to reduce the burden of major New Zealand health problems
  • High value nutrition – developing high value foods with validated health benefits
  • New Zealand’s biological heritage – protecting and managing our biodiversity, improving our biosecurity, and enhancing our resilience to harmful organisms
  • Our land and water – Research to enhance primary sector production and productivity while maintaining and improving our land and water quality for future generations
  • Life in a changing ocean – understanding how we can exploit our marine resources within environmental and biological constraints
  • The deep south – understanding the role of the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean in determining our climate and our future environment
  • Science for technological innovation – enhancing the capacity of New Zealand to use physical and engineering sciences for economic growth
  • Resilience to nature’s challenges – research into enhancing our resilience to natural disasters

They’re all worthy, but.

The trouble is, they’re just another ad-hoc add-on to a science and innovation system that has no clear idea of what we, NZ Inc, are trying to do, or of what particular piece(s) of a very large pie we should/could concentrate on.

At the same time (and I appreciate this is dirty-type talk) – these challenges don’t address where and how are we going to make more money for our country by clever use of R&D, and taking such new products and services to market?

There’s no connectedness between science and the economic health of our country. It means there a lack of relationships and countrywide partnering linking everything.

The NSC will achieve nothing. The public will have no more engagement with science, business is none the wiser, scientists will simply keep on keeping on.

Amongst comment, from my point of view, the best came from Prof Shaun Hendy – who was courageous enough to call a whole lot of nothing exactly that. Shaun’s a professor at Victoria University’s School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, as well as deputy director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He also a regular answer-provider on National Radio’s evening show. Original story is here.

“Of the 10 science challenges selected, only one really addresses one of the key economic challenges our country faces: namely the over-dependence of our economy on the primary sector,” he said.

“Our government invests far less in physical sciences and engineering than those of other small advanced economies, leaving our economy perilously exposed to volatile commodity markets.”

Having one of the challenges “simply aimed at making better use of physical science and engineering research is disappointing, given that we have just created a new organisation, Callaghan Innovation, to do exactly this”, Prof Hendy said.

Exactly.

We have MBIE, Callaghan Innovation, the Marsden Fund, these challenges – but no clear idea of what we’re doing.

Certainly is business as usual.


The Power of Un-Location gets an airing Peter Kerr Apr 16

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Toby Ruckert of Unified Inbox had an interesting blog recently – demonstrating what he has called the Power of Un-Location.

(sticK had a blog on an earlier version of Unified Inbox here.)

For a brief period while in Shanghai, he (relatively unintentionally) went back in time 25 years or so, where he didn’t have a mobile phone or internet connection. In this he found quite a freedom.

Toby’s expressed many of the disconcerting pressures and issues that some of us have about always being connected, always feeling like you’re having to check in to see who has been checking in. I see some of the same in my own children and their relationship with Facebook, (I’m probably one of its worst users).

It is not difficult to see why some researchers believe that modern children are having their brains rewired differently to how older generations did – a result of all this immediate connectivity and ability to find an answer to any question straight away.

I thoroughly recommend a read of Toby’s blog. He articulates some excellent reasons for disconnecting for a little bit at least – not the least of which can be summarised as ‘sanity’.

There’s always a danger in considering the past to have been slightly more rosy-coloured than today, but he raises some good points in his discussion.

His blog also points to other examples of people reverting, at least temporarily, to a non-connected lifestyle.

I’m sure that in the not too distant future, doctors and others will thoroughly recommend, if not almost force, all of us to have a break from always being on. In the meantime, thanks Toby for highlighting the Power of Un-Location.


Adding a hole lot of value to a piece of pine Peter Kerr Apr 04

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We all know that we’d prefer to export more than just a log of pine to overseas markets.

At the same time, the NZ Inc desire to add value to our raw commodities such as trees is almost tiresome through over-use.

So, it is a pleasure to be able to highlight a company and person doing something different and in their case, making a better pine pole.

Now TTT Products (and no, I’d never heard of them either until going through a recent exercise to maximise the return from a 20 year old four hectare block of pines that I’m involved with) isn’t a small firm. Its North Island headquarters at Tuakau covers 20ha, specialising in creating pine poles of many different sorts.

It may even seem to be a coals to Newcastle scenario, but TTT exports a fair number of these poles all around the Pacific and even to Europe and North America. This is partly because only pinus radiate (and Southern Yellow Pine) can take up the anti-insect, anti-corrosion chemical preservatives that then guarantee a longevity when buried in the ground.

However, the other clever product from TTT, partly ‘inspired’ by the recent Christchurch earthquakes, is what is called a MultiPole (and the basic focus of this blog)

It is a pole that’s actually a tube – TTT managing director John Reelick having perfected (and is keeping secret) a means to drill a long 50 – 150mm diameter hole in a pole. The pole is no weaker, and indeed, because the preservative chemicals can also be applied from the inside out, even more protected against rotting when in the ground.

What MultiPoles allow is a range of tools and complementary products such as cement or grout, that can be deployed because of this hole/tube.

For example, a water jet can be used to help clear the way and push the pole into the ground.

There’s a swag of engineering proofs and performance criteria, and Reelick and his team have further refined the MultiPole over the past couple of years.

Equally, the company’s demonstrating the versatility and application of poles as a modern building material for (rebuilding) Christchurch. They’ve built five storey offices, and a 15 storey model has also been proven as viable for the Garden City.

Which, is quite a lot of value-add for commodity, and an example of taking a raw material and making it work better.

Fantastic stuff all round. Keep up the good work TTT!

P.S.

The MultiPole appears to be a perfect, exportable, value-add product beyond a commodity. I’m sure John Reedick and his team have ideas they would like funding to research and perfect.

Callaghan Innovation has the mandate to be proactive – go give these guys a hand up.

They already know their market, and have a special product with, as IT businesses like to call it, a secret sauce (how to make the holes).

In the scheme of things, a very good CI investment bet for a multiple (or multipole in this case) return.


Dyed in the wool innovation partners up to go global Peter Kerr Apr 02

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The time it takes to convert a good idea into something that another person’s willing to buy is almost invariably longer than you think.

A couple of years ago, sticK reported on BGI Developments’ winning the right to commercialise AgResearch’s new textile fabric dyeing process.

The beauty of this process is different dye colours don’t bleed into each other – the picture or pattern remains sharp and embedded in the fabric (unlike say printing on top of a T-shirt for example).

BGI (stands for Bloody Good Ideas) directors Robyn George-Neich and Brent Gregory have spent part of the past two years looking for the right company to take the technology to the global market.

They now reckon they’ve found this key partner, American company Global Merino, San Anselmo, California headquartered.

George-Neich says the licenced technology allows designers to use merino in creative ways never before possible. This includes being able to choose colours and designs just before entering the market. Such flexibility of production reduces both the manufacturing and retailer risk.

BGI has spent the past year on commercial trials at Global Merino’s Melbourne facility, taking the innovation to commercial production.

Meanwhile, Global Merino report that their buyers’ responses to the new way of creating garments and graphics is “overwhelmingly positive”.

So, today the laboratory bench, tomorrow (or a few days after!), the world.

What this demonstrates is the value of partnership.

AgResearch’s mandate and strengths (these days) is not necessarily in commercialisation. That’s where BGI have come to the party. BGI doesn’t have the market depth or width to take the innovation to the world – that’s where Global Merino distribution is crucial.

BGI’s looking for other sectors of the textile market where the new dyeing technology can be applied, and AgResearch is trialling applications on wool in it various forms.

As George-Neich says, each of the parties would not be able to achieve alone what they can by working together.

She expects products made using the technology to be on shelves in 2014.

As a fusion of high performance and improved merino wool technologies and just-in-time fashion, this go to market model has a lot going for it.

Partnering, the right partnering, pays.


Creating a deep infrastructure tool and asset for Christchurch – a (relatively) cheap idea well worth NZ Inc considering Peter Kerr Mar 12

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Here’s an idea, so time topical it deserves much more thinking about by Christchurch, government and NZ Inc.

The Cement & Concrete Association of NZ’s (CCANZ) education and development manager Joe Gamman spoke at the recent Multicore World 2013 conference in Wellington. He’s been working alongside Callaghan Innovation on a potential ‘big data’ project for the past few months, and MW13 was, comparatively speaking, its first public airing. (Here’s the publicly available ‘Smart Idea’ project that received funding)

The general topic of his talk was around ‘Networked Infrastructure – Connecting Christchurch to the World’.

Dr Gamman’s pitch is to use the rebuilding of Christchurch as the world’s first test validation site for a ubiquitous sensing of the built environment. (Some of his presentation can be found here).

In other words, with standalone sensors able to be placed in any number of structures, buildings, roads, underground infrastructure (well, just about anything really), and the data about stresses, uses, traffic, changes over time (anything you want to measure) being collected, why not make this data available to the world.

What Dr Gamman sees being created is a piece of knowledge infrastructure; which only grows more valuable over time, and helps other people design new cities and improve old ones based on the learnings gained by having abundant infrastructure sensors as part of Christchurch’s rebuild.

“We have the opportunity to be high-touch as well as high-tech,” Dr Gamman says. “Such a curated data set would itself become an asset. A networked-Christchurch project would create a city where people will want to come to see what cities of the future will look like.”

Dr Gamman says there are a number of issues to address – not the least the legal framework around the data, who and how it can be accessed, and how it is protected.

Now, data security will become increasingly important as we develop an ‘internet everywhere’ society.

But security is just one component of an extremely good idea that would take advantage of the opportunity that Christchurch’s rebuild now provides.

Dr Gamman (and a hat tip to CCANZ for giving him the means to explore this idea) is now stress-testing the proposal, looking for corporate and government backers, and generally running the idea up the flagpole to see who salutes.

It is an idea, which, if implemented will benefit everyone, everywhere.

It will especially benefit Christchurch and provide huge economic spillover benefits for the city and New Zealand.

Gerry Brownlee, this would seem like a low-cost, high-profile and high return project that would be a real focal point in Christchurch’s rebuild.

As a government, National plays free and loose with the word ‘innovation’ – well here’s one that deserves a boost.


When we name something, our relationship with it changes Peter Kerr Feb 07

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(This blog also appears at pastureharmonies.org)

Michael Margolis, chief instigator at Get Storied in a Brand Storytelling 101 blog makes the following point.

1. When we name something, our relationship with it transforms

His first example has an agricultural flavour.

“If a cow is given a name by her owner, she generates more milk than a cow that’s treated as an anonymous member of the herd,” according to a research study by Newcastle University.

Margolis goes on:

Names provide us with purpose and direction, often revealing the inner purpose and destiny we are expected to fill. Those names impart an energetic connection that shapes us. When you name the people, creatures and places around you, your connection with the universe is strengthened, all through the stories you tell.

Brands operate in a similar way. A brand represents the complex emotional relationship between the storyteller – the one who is sharing something about that brand – and the audience. Put in a more traditional context, a brand represents the emotional relationship between a consumer and a product.

For all the above reasons, this is why NZ Inc should brand our method of responsible pastoralism.

We can capture the hearts and minds (and wallets) of consumers who care, by connecting with their emotions.

We can get off the commodity treadmill differentiating ourselves from much less pleasant and picturesque means of producing protein.

We can reinvent ourselves….but only if we give ourselves permission to think differently about what it is we offer the world. (Clue, it is vastly more than a piece of meat or a dairy ingredient in someone else’s product).

No one has laid claim to the pasture-based system of working in harmony with nature.

We can – and to reiterate Margolis’ words:

When we name something, our relationship with it transforms.


Achieving virtual scale for our largest industry Peter Kerr Jan 30

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(This blog also appears at pastureharmonies.org)

Scale matters in exporting according to the World Bank…..so here’s a way to get virtual scale for our biggest industry.

The World Bank’s recent report ‘Export Superstars’, shows that company size matters when it comes to countries’ exporting. Little SME’s don’t cut much mustard.

Business NZ chief executive Phil O’Reilly , in commenting on Rob O’Neil’s Stuff story that the World Bank wants us to think big, says

“New Zealand has some unique challenges to overcome in its incredibly small scale and being the most isolated developed economy in the world.”

O’Reilly goes onto say:

“one effective model is the aggregation of small businesses into groups allowing them to in some ways act like and gain the advantages of large businesses.”

Given that NZ Inc’s biggest business is the conversion of solar-derived pastures into various proteins and fats, through thousands of small on and off farm businesses (and even the large ones are mere tiddlers in the world scene), wouldn’t it make sense to aggregate if we could?

Given the fierce independence mindset of our agricultural (and other) businesses, the best way for us to do this I argue is around the shared story of our pastoral method?

After all, in an affluent consumer’s mind, the story of a product is a large reason why they do, or don’t, buy it.

No one has claimed the ‘global mind’ (nor branded it) for responsible pastoralism. By and large (with some exceptions), how we produce our protein is a pretty sophisticated use of sunshine, soil and fresh air.

Now, no one New Zealand company can claim the NZ Inc mandate.

But collectively we can.

Collectively, owning and telling our story through individuals, we can grunt up, obtain the virtual scale that the World Bank suggests is vital, aggregate around a common heritage and obtain some of these advantages of large businesses.

Owning our pastoral story would sit perfectly alongside the Collaboration Programme for Greater Farmer Profitability recently kicked off under the Primary Growth Partnership fund. In fact it would underpin the whole thing, and move us further away from the continual price fighting end of the market.

But perhaps storytelling as a concept is too big an ask for the collective brains and leadership of the agricultural industry. As a nation we’ve always been more comfortable about actually doing things, than talking about what we’re good at, what we believe.

So, even though we essentially perfected rotational grazing, the thought that we could or should name it at a global level is just too radical.

However; the opportunity to provide virtual scale for our largest industry is waiting in the wings.

We simply have to think differently about what it is we sell to the world – and that is an ideal, linked to a method.

The moment we stop thinking only production and think ‘picture’ is the moment we’ve adapted to a storytelling world – which in today’s digital age is the beginning, middle and end of selling.


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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