Our once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform innovation for Aotearoa

Vic Crone, Chief Executive Officer

Let’s not waste one of the best opportunities in decades to redesign the way we take New Zealand’s world-class research and turn it into solutions to solve some of the most pressing challenges of our time – climate change, health, housing and poverty for a start.??

Last year, the Government announced a review of our 30-year-old research, science and innovation (RSI) system, a consultation process called Te Ara Paerangi. Callaghan Innovation is supportive of this once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver transformative prosperity for Aotearoa. While it’s helpful to look back (at our successes and shortcomings), we must look forward as we face a very different landscape in the coming decades (technological, social, demographic and geo-political changes). It’s the latter where the paper falls short – almost completely absent is the ‘I’ in RSI.??

Kiwis expect results from tax-payer funded research, and rightly so. We have world-class research. What we do with it makes a fundamental difference. Better decision making, developing better policies for the country, and getting research out of the lab and into better products and services that significantly improve our lives are a few outcomes.

Innovation and commercialisation are among the pathways that translate research and science into these real-world impacts for Kiwis. However, the number of patents granted in Aotearoa to residents has dropped by 79 percent since 2009 and our innovation performance is on the decline too.?

Activities are underway to address fledgling commercialisation indicators – for example, our tech incubators focus on transfer of intellectual property with activities needed to grow that idea (capital, international networks, management skills and more). The Government co-invests with private capital partners leading to new ventures like Amaroq Therapeutics’ cancer research and Phytrac’s artificial intelligence that analyses land contamination. The Callaghan Innovation-led HealthTech Activator supports hundreds of Kiwi healthtech businesses to get critical health technologies to market.

Focusing on translating our research into real-world solutions for social, environmental and economic challenges must be central to our system design. And we must value and support multiple commercialisation paths. Commercialising research via the creation of companies is the most common. Increasingly, we see multiple outcomes, such as social and climate alongside the traditional economic ones.?

I’m curious how all of this government-funded research turns up in better products and services from the Government for its citizens? For example, we invest $500m into environmental research in Aotearoa annually, yet have no measurement to track its impact on climate change and how government services themselves are evolving and improving. Innovation and commercialisation of research are key paths for the Government too, not just the private sector.

To address our weaker performance in commercialisation and innovation we need to invest. As a start, we could earmark 15-20 percent of applicable research grant funding to commercialisation, building in real-world impact from the outset, acknowledging these multiple commercialisation paths and outcomes. Building innovation and commercialisation skills into RSI education and training could also be a good place to start.?

Our old system just won’t cut it in the face of significant challenges. Te Ara Paerangi can deliver a new approach. He waka eke noa. A canoe which we are all in with no exception. Research, science and innovation finally being weaved together, one whānau, for the benefit of our mokopuna. That’s the opportunity.