Investigators' Blog

Innovation.

This word has been thrown around a lot lately. In a recent guest lecture at the University of Waikato, I spoke about innovation being a mix of creativity, serendipity and courage. New Zealand is uniquely qualified for all three of these attributes so it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that our little country ranks 15^th on the 2015 Global Innovation Index.

Our number 8 wire DNA means we tend to look at seemingly complex problems and find simple and creative solutions. Our lowered sense of class hierarchy means we strike up serendipitous conversations with people regardless of rank or station.

The last attribute in this mix is courage.

“Courage to take a leap of faith while believing our idea, our solution has true value.”

Courage to enter a market when we may have very little commercial experience, connections or know-how.

The New Zealand Government has worked hard to foster an ‘innovation’ environment. Over the last 5 years start-up incubators have popped up and millions of dollars have been made available for Kiwis as ‘innovation grants’. Considering the tech sector’s GDP contribution has now surpassed NZ dairy and tourism, it seems like a winning ticket.

However, this tech boom and the money being thrown at it has a lining of caution. Caution that innovation is part of the journey, not the destination. That, at the front end there needs to be adequate education; at the back end is investment accountability.

A few months ago, I attended the New Zealand Future of Work Commission conference and was subsequently invited to participate in their leadership workshop. As one of ~12 national thought-leaders in the tech space (and one of only 2 women), we discussed and debated with policy-makers how we could get our country’s future back on track by addressing digital equality and education reform. During this workshop I stressed that throwing tablets into classrooms doesn’t mean we are creating value. Technology itself should be invisible – it should be about the educational value the students create with it.

“Technology is a tool, not a final product.”

More locally, I was asked to attend a Hamilton ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Forum by industry leaders. The group was experiencing an enormous skill gap with ICT graduates and an acute shortage of experienced ICT professionals to enable growth. As such, a common theme between this group and the NZ Future of Work Commission emerged. It outlined a stark disconnect between how we are currently educating our youth and what the tech industry actually needs. Since technology rides an exponential curve, by the time you’ve finished reading this article, the disconnect has worsened.

To further validate industry’s cry for reform, let’s take a look at the most recent NZ census report showing the mean personal income in the New Zealand tech sector by qualification:

Based on this data, there is no financial gain in entering the tech sector with anything greater than a Level 5 and 6 Diploma. In fact, you are financially disadvantaged when entering ICT after tertiary study. If our tertiary ICT education system was actually of value to the tech industry, why aren’t the more qualified people being paid more? Why are they being paid less?

“This should be simple arithmetic, but it isn’t.”

As New Zealanders, we are born with innovation running through our veins. Why can’t more ‘innovation grants’ be directed into re-writing our secondary and tertiary technology education systems? Why can’t ‘innovative’ be a term used to describe our curriculum?

For example, what if secondary and tertiary school students were guided by their teachers to design their own online learning programmes based on key knowledge requirements for a technology subject? This would shift the students into active learning (e.g. LdL) which has shown to increase knowledge gain to 50% compared to 12% by students in traditional, lecture-based classes. The teachers can, in-turn, learn from the very digital natives they are trying to teach.

The online learning programmes the students create could be presented to the open NZ education market through a forum like Pond, initially for comparison alongside the traditional curriculum. As rated feedback is received and positive outcomes are verified through higher test scores, the government could take the most successful programmes, reward the winning groups with innovation grants and approve those programmes as the baseline educational tool for that technology subject. As the tech industry needs change, the key knowledge requirements change and are again submitted to the open NZ market. The previously-designed online programmes are cross-examined against the new requirements and adapted by the students again, if needed. The cycle then continues with the winning programmes receiving innovation grants and a new curriculum baseline being adopted.

A second iteration of this would be co-creation funds being made available for the tech industry AND schools to apply for as partners, to design better technology education programmes together.

Not only does this concept teach the younger generation coding and learning design, but it solves the problem of the industry:curriculum disconnect for the whole country.

The fact that students also gain valuable entrepreneurial skills would help create a better start-up ecosystem in New Zealand.

I look forward to the day the media can re-frame our country’s success not by an All Blacks win, but by the wins we are achieving in technology education and innovation. Until then, I will continue to champion a stronger NZ tech economy through smarter strategy and lobby for education reform in technology.

For more data about the tech sector, check out my board on Figure.NZ. Or read more thoughts on a healthy NZ tech future.

If you want to support my voice in lobbying for education reform in technology, get in touch.

About

Rachel Kelly is a University of Waikato Alumni, who graduated with a Master of Science (First Class Honours) in 2005. In 2006, she moved to California to work for a global biotechnology company where she managed and grew multi-million-dollar business units within the USA, South East Asia, Central Asia, Middle East, and Africa. Rachel returned from California in 2014, launching a successful sales and marketing consultancy called SparkTank Ltd.

Over the last 17 months, Rachel has worked within the technology commercialization space through KiwiNet, offered advisory to various tech start-ups and SMEs including Clevercare, FlipIt, Climsystems and Aeronavics, and designed sales enablement solutions for such companies as 2degrees Mobile, Trustpower and Pinnacle Midlands Health Network.

She is often invited to guest lecture on creativity, innovation, and commercialization; to guide government policy on modernized education and digital equality; to judge MBA Dragon’s Den and local business competitions; and to mentor business events such as the Lion Foundation Young Enterprise Scheme (YES) and Innes48.

Rachel currently holds governance roles with Rotary International, NZ Technology Industry Association, Newstead Residents Association, and a new technology initiative (currently unannounced) in Hamilton. As a member of the Institute of Directors, she is committed to governance excellence and authentic leadership.

Rachel, her husband and two young children have chosen to settle down in Hamilton, and hope to make a big impact within the local and national technology sector moving forward.

You can find Rachel’s articles on local and national technology strategies on her LinkedIn page.

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“The rules are made by the people who turn up” – that was one of many slogans for the RockEnrol campaign in 2014. Why? Because we had learned that when it came to voting for the rulemakers, 3 out of 5 young Kiwis weren’t turning up.^[i]

Young people make up 20% of the voting population, while people over 65 make up 15%. The major difference in voting patterns? Only 5.2% of people over 65 did not vote in 2011, compared with 42% of those under 25.

Source: Professor Jack Vowles, Victoria University

There is a tonne of research in this area as to why. Young people don’t identify with the left-right political spectrum, they care about issues but not party politics. Young people don’t know who to vote for, or they don’t think their vote will count.

In fact, when surveyed only 20% of non-voters answered “I am not interested” as their reason for not voting. Meaning that 4 out of 5 non-voters have some other reason, and those reasons are much more complex than most people think.^[ii]

Digging into the data.

The first thing you’ll notice if you look into the qualitative data is that there is no such thing as the “youth vote”.

Of the approximately 580,000 18 – 29 year olds^[iii] in New Zealand, the ones least likely to vote are of Māori, Pasifika or Asian descent. Recent migrants are less likely to vote than long-term migrants, and those with a low level of income or education are also less likely to turnout at election time. Same goes for young people who live in rural communities.

International research tells us that young people rarely cite a preference for doing something else on election day as the reason for not voting, nor are they protesting by not voting. Young would-be voters feel they have less security in the welfare system and labour market compared to older voters, and that they and their interests have been excluded from formal politics – both party and institutional.^[iv]

In short, if you are part of a group that is marginalised economically and socially, you’re much more likely to be marginalised politically too.

The “cycle of mutual neglect” or “rational actor theory”.

What we also know from research is that young people don’t vote because parties don’t appeal and parties don’t appeal because young people don’t vote. There is a mutual distrust between political parties and young people by and large. In a very recent trust survey put out by Victoria University, MPs are the second least trusted group in society with just 8% of New Zealanders saying they trust them lots or completely, alongside media and just ahead of bloggers who are the least trusted group in New Zealand at just 5%.^[v]

Outdated outreach mechanisms and slow-moving political machines

Despite under-30’s large numbers and demonstrable ability to turnout to vote in record numbers for candidates who appeal to them and their issues directly (think: President Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2016)^[vi] New Zealand’s political parties do not seem to think that the young are a demographic whose vote is worth chasing.

Political parties (and the electoral process that surrounds it) have been slow to take into account young people’s forms of political activism, interests and means of communication. The internet is the most obvious example of this.

In 2014, it still wasn’t possible to enrol online as a first-time voter. You needed to have filled in a paper enrollment form first, which you can pick up at your local post office. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know too many 18 year olds frequenting the post office these days.

Take also the prospect of online voting as an example; 75% of people aged 25 -34 are willing to cast a vote online. Compare that with the 38% of people aged 65 – 74 and the generational disparity becomes obvious.^[vii]

Personally I am not an advocate for online voting as the silver bullet. My tech-minded friends who are much smarter than I inform me that technically we’re not at a level where we could do it safely yet (think Anonymous hackers). There is also a huge risk of increased coercion with online voting. I think more work needs to be done in this space.

But one thing the political elite could take away from this demographic trend is that if you want to appeal to young voters then your online game better be damn good.

RockEnrol to the rescue.

Looking back now, 2014 was a bizarre election. Eminem, Edward Snowden and a fair amount of Dirty Politics all made an appearance. But it was also the election that saw unprecedented attempts to get out the youth vote. RockEnrol was one of those attempts.

RockEnrol volunteers in Myers Park, Auckland (Photo credit: Chris Pemberton)

RockEnrol is a non-partisan, youth-led and volunteer-powered campaign combining popular culture with grassroots community organising to build political power for young people by encouraging them to use their vote. Our goal was to increase the number of young people casting a vote in 2014 and we succeeded. The number of 18 – 29 year olds who voted from 2011 to 2014 jumped from 42% to 49%.^[viii] Sure that’s still less than half of our young people voting but after decades of decline a spike in the alternate direction can only be a good thing.

Here’s how we did it in 7 (not that) easy steps:

1. We looked like the people we were trying to target.
   Of those old enough to stand as MPs, people under 30 are massively under-represented in Parliament. Almost 9 out of 10 MPs are in their 40s, 50s and 60s, even though those age groups make up only half of the eligible voting population.^[ix] RockEnrol was run by young people, for young people. Our volunteer median age was 21.5.

2. We didn’t reinvent the wheel, we adjusted it for context.
   RockEnrol was modelled off the US organisation ‘Rock The Vote’ who have turned out more than 5 million young voters since they launched 25 years ago. We thought why try to do something totally new ourselves when our much better resourced brothers and sisters in the US have already tried (and tested) out hundreds of tactics to turn out young voters. Tactics we stole from Rock The Vote? Voter registration (aka enrolment) and pledge to vote, volunteer phone banking, Facebook advertising, in-person canvassing and community events. For instance, what we know from the Rock The Vote’s experience is that by combining a pledge to vote (either by phone or in person) with a follow-up get-out-the-vote phone call on Election Day, we can increase turnout by 11 percentage points,^[x] so that’s exactly what we did.

3. We combined sizzle with steak.
   The formula for RockEnrol was this: Make a pledge to vote (for whoever you want) in the 2014 Election. A pledge consists of giving us your name, email and phone number – either in person or online – and ticking a box that says “I promise to vote on September 20th” and as a reward for your pledge you then get a free ticket to a RockEnrol party happening somewhere around the country. We had 60 free gigs – organised by RockEnrol volunteers – all around the country. Homebrew, Tiki Taane, Tali, Third3ye, Esther Stephens & The Means, Optimus Gryme and heaps of other artists volunteered their time for free (or very cheap) to pull off this mammoth effort.At the party you see a bunch of other young people who are going to vote (providing social proof) and you start to think, “hmm maybe voting isn’t lame”.  And while it’s fresh in your mind, we have a booth set up at the event with a keen young volunteer who is there to make sure you’re enrolled and you have the information you need. Then in the lead up to Election Day, one of our volunteers sends you an email and gives you a call to make sure you remember your pledge to vote. They ask which voting booth you’re going to and how you’re going to get there, because (as we’ve learned from Rock The Vote) when people talk through their plan they’re much more likely to follow through. RockEnrol was essentially parties with purpose.

4. We collaborated.
   RockEnrol was by no means the only contributing force toward the spike in the youth vote. You had advanced voting which made the act of voting much more accessible to voters. You had the Internet Party who – despite a low number of votes – had thrown an explicit conversation about targeting young voters into the mix.We were also part of a coalition of groups and individuals trying to get out the youth vote called the Virgin Voter Collective, and according to independent Horizon Research conducted after the 2014 election, approximately 70,00 18-34 year olds were influenced to vote by the entirety of our coalition’s activities. Not bad for a grassroots effort.

5. We met young people where they were… literally.
   We prioritised social media as a channel of communication with our target audience. We enrolled people in nightclubs, University dorms, and campus cafes.

6. We offered a different narrative.
   We put the onus of low youth voter turnout on the political system, and not on young people. All too often we hear the narrative that young people are too apathetic, too lazy, too self-indulgent to vote and here we were a group of young people demonstrating the exact of opposite of the stereotypes held by some. We bought more young people’s views to the table, and offered a different perspective than the usual political commentators.

7. We took young people seriously.
   We asked young people what issues they care about. Our volunteers had thousands of civic conversations with young people. We treated young people as a constituency worth caring about, something I still think political parties in New Zealand are by and large failing to do.

RockEnrol will be back in 2017 and it is my hope and ambition we’ll continue to see the number of young people voting rise. I’m confident it will.

^[i] Down, Down, Down: Turnout in New Zealand from 1946 to the 2011 Election, Professor Jack Vowles, Victoria University

^[ii] Non-voters in 2008 and 2011 general election, Statistics New Zealand

^[iii] Population by age group in New Zealand, Figure.NZ

^[iv] Slideshare from Dr Jennifer Curtin, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Auckland University

^[v] Who do we trust? March survey 2016, Victoria University

^[vi] Bernie, Barack and young voters, Vox

^[vii] Willingness to vote online in general elections, Figure.NZ

^[viii] New Zealand general election: Varieties of communication 2014, Professor Jack Vowles of Victoria University

^[ix] The difference between you and an MP, Ours infographic

^[x] Winning Young Voters, Rock The Vote Handbook

About

Laura O’Connell Rapira is Cofounder of RockEnrol and Director of Campaigns at ActionStation.

RockEnrol is a youth-led campaigning organisation that combines grassroots community organising, digital tools and popular culture to build political power for young people.

ActionStation is an independent, member-led not-for-profit organisation representing over 100,000 New Zealanders holding power to account, standing for human rights, a healthy environment, transparent democracy and economic fairness.

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When Shaun Hendy offered me the chance to write a blog for this project, I jumped at the opportunity. I have been working for interesting and innovative organisations who trade in knowledge for over 10 years, and before that I was a patent examiner – so the opportunity to explore innovation from a different angle, with interesting data from Figure.NZ seemed like a cool thing to do.

The thing that I didn’t expect was unexpected knowledge. Figure.NZ have an interesting collection of graphs, and drilling through the stuff that came up in my searches, I happened across some very interesting facts about the innovation space that surprised me, and challenged my assumptions. This is a bit of a rambling journey where I have grouped my discoveries into three main areas – Wellington and the tech sector, girls and knowledge, and (to keep it totally on topic) innovation in NZ.

Wellington and the tech sector

I have been living and working in the Wellington Region for the last 25 years, and I think it’s a pretty great place to be.

So when I came across this graph, representing the percentage of the population employed in the tech sector last year, I felt a sense of pride. We have the largest percentage of people working in ICT compared to all other regions – INCLUDING AUCKLAND!

At Viclink we often deal in the high tech manufacturing space, which is also represented in this graph, and it’s interesting to note what a small percentage of the Wellington population is employed here.

So why is this interesting?

Despite only 5.6% of people in the Wellington region working in the tech sector, it provides 9.8% of the GDP of the Wellington region, as shown below. That’s almost double – a pretty productive sector. Further – even though only 0.9% of the population is employed in the high tech manufacturing sector, it was accountable for 5.7% of the exports from the Wellington region. That is quite significant, and tells me that we are doing things here that the world wants. Our companies might be little, or we might be doing only a few things, but they are having significant impact.

What is even better is knowing that the high tech manufacturing sector is set to grow. Substantial effort is being put in by local councils and government bodies to support the growth in this area. Viclink has some exciting startups and partnerships being formed. One of these is a deal between researchers at Victoria University and Milestone Science and Technology Ltd, based in China, which will see the creation of three new companies including one in Lower Hutt to develop and manufacture HTS products using components sourced from other New Zealand companies. If we continue to maintain this approach to our new partnerships, startups and projects in this space, we can achieve some pretty amazing things

Girls and knowledge

Whilst my personal background and qualifications are in commerce and biotechnology, I have largely been working with teams in the physics, maths and engineering spaces since 2005, most recently in a university context. These areas of science are typically male dominated. With communications part of my role it meant ensuring that the amazing female researchers who were working in that space got plenty of airtime.

So the graph below came as quite a surprise to me. It clearly demonstrated that in New Zealand the boys are substantially outnumbered by the girls at a ratio of almost 3:2. Digging a little deeper into the data, this ratio has been pretty steady between 2007 and 2013.

The prevailing view in many science subjects is that the number of girls were dropping off at PhD level, and in general this is not true either. The graphs below show that yes, it was indeed true that girls outnumber boys at undergraduate level. However even at PhD level there are more women enrolled overall than men.

What does differ is the field of study males and females are choosing, as shown below.

Women are shying away from anything to do with technology, computer science, engineering, etc. This is reflected in the lack of gender diversity in tech startups and other related fields, and this lack of diversity gets a lot of media coverage. I see this annually with only about 20% of the participants of our annual Victoria Entrepreneur Bootcamp being female, and very few of those being from a technology background. Instead these women have usually studied subjects such as biology, health, design, or commerce.

However there has also been quite a bit of media lately recognising that Wellington is becoming known as a great place to be a female founder of a tech company. Part of this success can be attributed to meetup group known as the Female Founders Exchange, a group of fantastic female role models who support each other to succeed.

So for those female students who are choosing technology subjects and want to be an entrepreneur, Wellington is not only a great place to be a tech startup in terms of having a thriving tech industry as noted in my first segment, it is also the best place in NZ to be a female founder.

Innovation in NZ

As the Entrepreneurship Manager at Viclink, my role is primarily about encouraging the development of entrepreneurial skills in our students. I was excited to discover that New Zealand is the second easiest place in the OECD to be an entrepreneur.

One of the key outputs of a university is people. Students graduating with knowledge in their chosen field and ready to apply it in their chosen career. We see entrepreneurship as a possible career pathway for innovative students.

People are just as important in innovative businesses as shown below. The three most important sources of ideas or information underpinning innovation are people related – staff or customers. And whilst the biggest barrier to innovation is cost – the next three are all related to lacking key personnel with the skills necessary to implement the innovation.

At some point in my life – I was a patent examiner. And I find it very interesting (but not surprising) that access to IP is not a particularly significant barrier to innovation, nor is it strongly represented as a source of innovation, except in the sense that it’s the knowledge, skills and ideas of people that allow both the generation and implementation of innovative ideas. To me this reinforces the importance of our role in ensuring our graduates are well prepared for life in innovative roles.

So what did I learn?

The process of going through the Figure.NZ graphs and exploring data that related to innovation and my role reinforced a few things to me.

I run a programme supporting the development of young entrepreneurs, and have always talked about our focus being on the people, rather than the ideas or startups themselves. Once the individuals learn the skills to start businesses, they can apply it again and again to all their future ideas and innovations. What I discovered here validated our approach, and the importance of people in innovation. Turns out that NZ is an easier place to become an entrepreneur than other countries, and here in Wellington we have a healthy tech sector, making it this legitimate career choice for graduates.

Women are underrepresented in the programmes that I run. Although some have suggested that this may be a factor of marketing and messaging – the majority of our startups are in the tech space. I have long thought that there is a strong correlation to the numbers of students coming through these fields of study, and it’s nice to see evidence of this. However, it also presents an opportunity to connect those women who are studying tech subjects with the well-established networks in the tech industry, and continue to inspire young women into this space so it can continue to flourish.

Finally – the tech sector in Wellington is interesting, productive, and generates significant export revenue for the region. Its growth is well supported, and we at Viclink are excited to be contributing to that growth with a promising pipeline of projects, partnerships and startups in this space.

About

Emily Grinter is Viclink’s Entrepreneurship Manager, responsible for developing, co-ordinating and delivering a range of programmes and initiatives (including the Victoria Entrepreneur Bootcamp) that will help to foster an innovative, entrepreneurial culture across every faculty at Victoria University of Wellington.

No stranger to the University, Emily has studied at Victoria (she holds a BSc in Genetics and Molecular Biology, and a BCA in Management) and worked there, firstly as the Centre Manager for The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, and more recently as a Research Funding Advisor for the Research Office. Emily has also worked for Industrial Research Ltd (now known as Callaghan Innovation) as a Science Support Co-ordinator, and as a Patent Examiner for the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand.

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This doesn’t seem to be a universally accepted proposition in New Zealand. The total innovation rate for New Zealand businesses is less than 50%.

Think Walkman and iPod. Innovation can kill a product. Think Blockbuster and Netflix. Innovation can kill a company.

Admittedly those are extreme and often used examples of disruptive innovation and “replacing goods or services being phased out” is not a high ranking reason for innovating in New Zealand.

The impact of more subtle innovation is perhaps less headline worthy. How do utility companies send you the invoice for their services? Do they come in the post or arrive by email? It’s probably your choice. This small innovation which changes the way in which the bill is delivered (to align with your preference) doesn’t change the core service (getting your power) but it improves the overall customer experience and reduces costs.

Responding to customers and reducing costs are both recognised by New Zealand businesses as important reasons to innovate. However, the number one reason New Zealand businesses say that they innovate (more than 80% of all innovating businesses) is to increase revenue. If this is going to happen, then innovation needs to create value for customers. If people can’t see the value in something then they won’t be paying for it.

Surely all New Zealand businesses want to survive and to thrive? What about the more than 50% of NZ businesses who say that they are not innovating? Why are they not innovating?

The two most significant barriers to innovation identified by New Zealand businesses are the cost to develop or introduce innovation and a lack of management resources.

These challenges can seem significant when viewed through the lens of innovation by New Zealand businesses getting global recognition. Xero is a high-tech business that is building a cloud platform offered globally to “change how you tackle the books”. It was named at number 1 on the Forbes Innovative Growth Companies List in both 2014 and 2015. At the helm, Rod Drury has been recognised internationally for his skills as an entrepreneur. Xero has recently confirmed that it will be able to break even without further capital raising but there has been a long period of significant cost. The company’s most recent round raised $147m. It is easy to see why cost and lack of management resources may be perceived as a barrier.

However, innovation does not only happen at that end of the spectrum or at that scale. Coffix sells cups of coffee in Auckland and Hamilton. It was started by an engineer who wanted to make buying a cup of coffee more affordable. The innovation came in the business model. It involved maintaining quality but reducing costs (by only offering take-away coffees and reducing the options available – no caramel soy decaf lattes on offer) and did not require any particular innovation management resource to develop. It is creating value for customers and revenue for the business.

New Zealand provides a very supportive environment for innovation. We score highly on the OECD’s ease of entrepreneurship index and the availability of venture capital to entrepreneurs. The most prevalent sources of ideas or information for innovation, existing staff and customers, are available to every business in operation.

At its essence innovation is simply making things easier, better or more convenient for customers. There are always opportunities to improve. A culture of innovation needs to permeate all New Zealand businesses.

See all of  Jonathan’s FigureNZ data boards for more insights.

About

Jonathan has a keen interest in innovation, commercialisation and entrepreneurship. He has worked in law and banking in New Zealand, Europe and Asia and is the CEO of boutique law firm TGT Legal. After completing a Master of Commercialisation and Entrepreneurship, he co-founded Wine Grenade, a company which has commercialised intellectual property developed by Plant and Food Research. Wine Grenade has been a finalist in the NZ Hi-Tech Awards and the NZ Innovator Awards.

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The first time I visited a prison, I was 12 years old. I went with my father and a group of musicians to hold a church service for the inmates.

We repeated the service in various parts of the prison, and in the minimum security wing I was allowed to sit and talk with the men after church.  I sat down next to a Māori man, let’s call him Bill. Not having been told it was impolite to do so, I asked Bill what he had done to end up in prison.

He told me he was in prison for driving without a license. I was shocked. Surely you couldn’t go to prison for driving without a licence?

“You can if you do it often enough,” he explained.

Bill had been in prison before, more than once. The first time he’d been too young, he told me, to realise prison wasn’t cool. Each time he got out he’d been determined not to do anything that would land him back inside, and every time he’d failed. It was hard to find a job, for example, that didn’t require him to drive. Eventually, he would get pulled over, found to be driving without a licence and sent back to prison.

Even as a 12 year old I could see Bill was stuck in a vicious cycle.

I also understood, even then, that Bill was more likely than my dad to be pulled over, to have his licence checked.

“Next time I get out, I’m going to get a bike,” he explained, “I’ll have a way to get to work and to visit my kids, and I won’t end up back in here.”

Over the past 30 years, I’ve often wondered whether Bill got that bike, and whether he managed – against the odds – to stay out of prison for good.

So what does Bill have to do with innovation?

To be honest, I’m wary of the way we talk about innovation. In a country where discrimination remains entrenched, inequality is growing, and the odds of people like Bill altering the course of their lives in any significant way are low, the fact that we describe something like Uber as ‘innovative’ seems, at best, silly and, at worst, downright cynical.

To be fair on innovation, all it claims to be is “something new or different”, which I concede is a definition even Uber could meet. My beef isn’t really with innovation, my beef is with the fact that we’re so keen to talk about things that are “new and different” that we often skim over history, deny reality and ignore complexity.

So here’s a dose of reality: research carried out in New Zealand between 2002 and 2007 showed a considerably higher rate of re-imprisonment for Māori offenders (55%) than for NZ Europeans (45%) and Pacific offenders (36%). Analysis of the variables contributing to this disparity pointed to the fact that:

“Maori offenders as a group tend on average to be younger than Europeans”^[i].

Likewise, when considering the disproportionate number of Māori in prison, analysts emphasised the impact of “the very large numbers of young Māori entering the criminal justice system for the first time each year.”^[ii]

Reflecting on this I thought about Bill, and looked up rates of youth charged with traffic and vehicle regulatory offences in New Zealand, by ethnicity.

The first thing worth noting about this graph is that in 2007 the number of young Māori people in New Zealand being charged with traffic and vehicle offences in New Zealand was equal to the number of Pakeha young people being charged – despite Māori making up only 24% of the total youth population, compared to 72% Pakeha.^[iii]

But perhaps you noticed something else about this graph? Did you see the sudden drop in youth being charged with traffic and vehicle offences after 2008? What’s that about?

Well, something genuinely innovative happened in New Zealand in 2002, something that may well lie behind this sudden drop-off.

In 2002, the Youth Offending Strategy was launched, building on the changes implemented by The Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1989, which laid the foundation for a genuinely innovative approach to young people who offend.

“[T]he New Zealand system represented the first legislated example of a move towards a restorative justice approach to offending which recognises and seeks the participation of all involved in the offending and focuses on repairing harm, reintegrating offenders, and restoring the balance within the community affected by the offence.”^[iv]

In other words, in 2002 New Zealand rolled out a new approach to children and young people who commit criminal offences. More than ten years later, apprehension rates for children and young people have fallen.

I’d like to stop for a moment to let you take that in, because it’s not something you’ll hear very often in the news: the number of young people being charged with criminal offences in New Zealand has dropped over the past two decades.

In 2007, 5067 young people were charged in New Zealand courts – that equates to 100 out of every 10,000 young people in our country. By 2012 that number had reduced to 3016, or 74 out of every 10,000. This is the lowest rate in 20 years.^[v]

This is very good news. This is innovation doing what it’s supposed to: breaking old, entrenched patterns; turning things around; opening up new possibilities.

But the news is not all good. Over that same period, disparities in youth justice outcomes for Māori have increased, and apprehension rates for Māori children and young people remain four to five times higher than for non‐Māori.^[vi]

This increase in disparities is driven by greater improvement in outcomes for non-Māori youth, rather than by a worsening of outcomes for Māori. In fact, the number of Māori youth charged in court has dropped as well, but at a much smaller rate than for Pakeha or Pasifika youth.

The number of youth charged in court has decreased for all major age and ethnic groups

So, what next?

Smarter people than me have reviewed all this data, and much more, and concluded that there are at least three key areas for further innovation in our youth justice system:

1. Deepen engagement with family, whānau, and communities.
2. Improve the data available to inform frontline decision‐making in the youth justice system.
3. Extend access to the youth justice system to young people aged up to 21 years.

Each of these warrants its own exploration, but since the official Youth Crime Action Plan focuses largely on the first and second of these, I’m going to close with an argument in favour of the third.

Currently, children aged up to 16 years can be dealt with by the Youth Courts, but the government is looking at a plan to extend this to young offenders as old as 19.

Our youth justice system is not only innovative. It also appears to be achieving at least some of the changes it was created to achieve.

For example, the number of children and young people given an order in court in New Zealand has dropped for all ethnic groups since 2008.

For anyone concerned that children and young people who offend are being let off too lightly, two thoughts:

1. The Youth Court system has allowed the community, including the family and the victim, to play a role in holding the young person to account in a way that is meaningful to them.^[vii]
2. Youth Courts have also exercised their power to apply adult sentences in serious cases in a small by significant number of cases, as shown in this graph.

New Zealand youth given an order in court by ethnicity:

All over the world, people are studying our youth justice system, wondering how they might be able to replicate some of these positive outcomes for themselves. Without ignoring the very significant areas for improvement, this is the kind of innovation we should be celebrating.

This is also the kind of innovation we should be extending, specifically by lifting the age of access to Youth Courts in New Zealand to at least 19 years.

About

Marianne Elliott is Director of Strategy and Story for ActionStation – a movement to reignite participation in our democracy and restore ‘people power’ by building a community of active citizens and facilitating collective action for progressive change. ActionStation is an independent, member-led not-for-profit organisation representing over 100,000 New Zealanders holding power to account, standing for human rights, a healthy environment, transparent democracy and economic fairness.

Marianne’s background is varied – trained as a human rights lawyer, she worked in Timor-Leste, the Gaza Strip and Afghanistan before returning to New Zealand in 2008. She is also the author of Zen Under Fire, a memoir about her work in Afghanistan, and co-owner of an organic Mexican restaurant in Wellington.

^[i]http://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research_and_statistics/reconviction-patterns-of-released-prisoners-a-48-months-follow-up-analysis/re-imprisonment-rates-by-ethnicity.html

^[ii] http://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research_and_statistics/reconviction-patterns-of-released-prisoners-a-48-months-follow-up-analysis/re-imprisonment-rates-by-ethnicity.html

^[iii] http://ethniccommunities.govt.nz/sites/default/files/files/EthnicityDataOnlineDemographicOverview.pdf

^[iv] http://www.youthcourt.govt.nz/youth-justice/youth-justice-principles-and-processes/

^[v]  Youth Crime Action Plan, Ministry of Justice, 2013 p12 https://www.justice.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Publications/YCAP-full-report.pdf

^[vi] Youth Crime Action Plan, Ministry of Justice, 2013 https://www.justice.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Publications/YCAP-full-report.pdf

^[vii] http://justspeak.org.nz/extending-the-youth-court-jurisdiction/

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Innovation is bandied about as the word “de rigueur” – it would seem we all need to be innovative and it’s even become the subject of surveys in national newspapers.

A recent New Zealand Herald article reported 97% of bosses saying their organisation has an innovation culture, when just 23% of employees thought this was the case. The study by recruitment firm Hudson NZ revealed a gap in understanding and probably a lack of conversation between management and teams, which after all is one of the most important foundations for innovation.

So what’s happening? Is it that we are now so bombarded by information and constant digital disruption that we all just have to be innovative as a common denominator? I don’t think so, because the best innovation is probably the simplest and the process has been around for a long time. While innovation does seem to be the subject of a lot of current commentary, as words go, it’s not exactly innovative – derived from the Latin word innovat or “renewed or altered” its use started in the 16^th century.

When we talk about innovation we usually refer to a result, something tangible we can touch, discuss or look at. But the process of innovation actually starts much earlier – it starts with conversations about doing something new or making changes to something established.

Here’s an example involving our company:

SimplHealth has evolved from another business called The Simpl Group, a systems integrator for companies working in a broad range of sectors. A focus area of ours has always been healthcare, along with a passion to make a difference to people’s lives through great innovation. Examples of systems developed include technology to run New Zealand’s national disabilities management programme called Socrates, the electronic prescription service in Australia called eRX and New Zealand’s School Based Vaccination Service. Then three years ago we decided to focus 100% on healthcare and we became SimplHealth – we made a simple change (no pun intended) to something already established and became very different.

Since then our view of innovation has developed, but it is still reliant on a steady continuous flow of ideas, discussions and observations involving our whole team, as well as associates, business networks and even friends and family. Innovation is all about using the resources we have, either existing or new, to generate better health outcomes. From our perspective it involves having information as a foundation, sharing it and collaborating, and then developing processes to improve the delivery of healthcare.

Take prescriptions for example. The archaic process of writing prescriptions has been around for decades, if not centuries. The pain point of this process is inaccuracy that can impact people’s health, and inefficiency because pharmacists had to decipher and then retype medication information into a separate system. So we developed SimplHealth ePrescribing, a digital system that increases patient safety by sharing prescription and medication information between healthcare professionals securely, whenever needed. This technology now supports the New Zealand ePrescription Service – we just made an old system digital.

The enablers of innovation are the people in the system – the patients, the doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare providers. Real innovation can only happen with the input of the various groups included in healthcare. The biggest opportunity for innovation now is for collaboration between people, companies and other organisations to develop new solutions. Real innovation starts with conversations and listening so as to understand the problems that need solutions.

Ten years ago you probably wouldn’t have seen two IT companies embracing collaboration but now it’s imperative. In New Zealand the health IT sector has taken partnership on board. In December last year, twelve health IT companies signalled an intent to collaborate together as NZ Inc. to deliver the best value and improve healthcare for millions of New Zealanders. Supporting this is the rising power of people and a renewed approach to information – this People Power concept is now one of the central strategic themes of New Zealand’s recently launched Health Strategy.

The graphs below show we are increasingly digitally focused when it comes to healthcare, with internet use for healthcare growing between ages and ethnic groups and health services being in the top five searches.

Innovation is about doing things differently and using what we already have to create something better for the future, and it involves everyone. It’s a simple idea that’s probably been over-complicated. With the growing data available, and technology for sharing and collaboration, now really is the age for innovation – but it all starts with a conversation.

About

Jodi Mitchell is CEO of SimplHealth, a health IT specialist delivering technology solutions to help the sharing of information, safely and securely, between healthcare professionals, to support better decisions, enhance health services and deliver cost savings.

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Te Hiku Media is a charitable media organisation, collectively belonging to the Far North iwi of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupouri, Ngai Takoto, Te Rārawa and Ngāti Kahu. The station is an iwi communications hub for radio and online media. Māori language revitalisation is a core focus of Te Hiku Media, as is archiving and digital innovation.

Please check out the below video about the online Whare Kōrero o Te Hiku Media and the journey from terrestrial broadcasting to digital media. Te Hiku is also running a few more stories on innovation this week, so checkout tehiku.nz.

View the video: The Story Behind Te Hiku Media’s Online Whare Kōrero

Innovation can mean anything: creating affordable housing for Māori, recycling plastic for use in 3D printers in the pacific, or even hacking the API calls to Pokemon GO. For a small team at Te Hiku Media in the Far North town of Kaitaia, it simply means DOING.

What if we throw a camera in front of our radio news? What if we live stream Waitangi? What if we build our own online digital platform that helps streamline kaimahi workflow so we can focus on te reo Māori content? These may not sound innovative, but for us these “what ifs” required taking risks, rocking the boat, and just doing things differently. We’ve failed along the way, but we’ve learned so much. By doing these things, we were able to:

1. raise the profile of the organisation,
2. raise the profile of te reo Māori,
3. create new projects and initiatives within the organisation, and
4. win awards.

I’m meant to incorporate data in this reframing innovation themed blog (for more check out Reframing Innovation). While data is hugely important, I think the story of Te Hiku is a unique one worth telling that I hope it will inspire other small organisations to give innovation a go. Let me tell you that we had no data when we started this journey. Data may have been available, but we didn’t know where to find it or how to use it.

Consider our bold move to provide a 24/7 online television stream in 2013 (as a frame of reference, Facebook launched live video streaming and Twitter bought Periscope in 2015). We had to do this because the big analogue to digital switchover killed our Te Hiku TV broadcast in Kaitaia. While we had a small reach in the towns of Kaitaia, Ahipara, and Awanui, we had a niche and engaged audience. But the data for internet access in the Far North said only 20 to 40% of households in those towns had internet. The stats for Te Hiku’s audience — primarily Māori and kuia and kaumātua — would have been worse! If we relied on that data and the fact that we needed to spend a significant amount of capital on hardware, software, and services to provide that stream, then we may not have taken the risk of launching a 100% online TV station.

Check out the Figure.NZ map to see 2013 Census data on household access to the internet in the Far North District, New Zealand.

We learnt a heck of a lot by taking that risk. We learnt that no one watched our 24/7 online TV, but people did watch our on-demand content. We also learnt that with the equipment we procured we could do this new and exciting thing (we’re still in 2014) called live streaming. Iwi radio are no strangers to live, outdoor broadcasts — we have broadcasted treaty hearings, kapa haka, manu kōrero, and other events LIVE for the past 25 years. Radio is the medium of choice for outdoor broadcasts because, compared with TV, it’s more affordable and not too difficult. But since we had the capability to stream video online courtesy of the Ministry killing our analogue TV, we decided to chuck some video over our traditional radio broadcast. We first did that in November 2014 when the Hōkūleʻa arrived in Aotearoa on its Mālama Hōnua Voyage (marama whēnua in Māori… take care da land in Hawaiian pidgin). The team was thrilled! Yea, we only had some 350 viewers (that excludes our radio audience), but it was something different.

We then went on to be the first to live video stream Waitangi (Iwi radio live broadcasted Waitangi for more than 20 years), and we even used Raspberry Pis and iPhones to allow our kaimahi to live cross from anywhere on the treaty grounds. The staff were even more inspired after the Waitangi broadcast. Yeah it was tough. Yea we had dropouts and tonnes of bloopers. Yeah we got moved next to the Port-a-loos after being informed mainstream media complained that Te Hiku Media was given preferential treatment due to being a Māori organisation… but the audience loved it! We had a group watching us taking shots every time they heard us say iPhone (I think they had a good time). And the staff had a great time and went home feeling inspired. All of a sudden staff were saying, “can we build an app to do this,” “what’s the data like,” “what if we had multiple live feeds next year?!?!?!” (Eeeeeks).

Check out the video below from another broadcast that shows just how fun things can be when you get out of the studio and try something new. That’s a LIVE cross to someone on a zodiac.

View the video: This is how we LIVE CROSS in the Far North

But live streaming is just a part of what we do. We have 3 radio stations. We have a treasure trove of archives that need to make its way online. And we have to somehow manage content coming from these work streams. In 2015 Te Hiku Media applied for and successfully received a Vision Mātauranga Māori grant to further explore the innovative opportunities around live streaming, broadcasting, content management, and archiving. And that’s how the Whare Kōrero was born.

Whare Kōrero. Literally, house of information. It’s Te Hiku’s marae in the sky. It’s also known as a website, but we’re story tellers and the online whare kōrero is a much more compelling story. Plus, it’s more than a website. It’s a digital platform that aims to bridge the gaps between streaming, broadcasting, content management and archives (if you too would like your own whare kōrero, get in touch).

One of the beauties of building your own platform from the ground up is that you can adapt it quickly to suit the ever changing industry. If we decide we need to podcast, we’ll build podcasting in the platform (check out our NZ Music podcast — August is Māori Music Month!). If another Iwi station needs assistance in live streaming, we’ll hack together a web-based, multi-iPhone switching solution (again, get in touch!). The platform enables innovation in our organisation whether the innovation is around the technology in the platform, how we decide to distribute content, or the data we can collect from the platform. Innovation in one part of the business definitely spills over into others.

We’re also talking more about data as an organisation because we have easy access to the data. We know where our viewers come from, how long they’re staying on our site, and what type of content they like. The data has verified why our activities are producing the results we’re seeing. For example, the graph below shows the growth in pageviews on our website since launching our Whare Kōrero in November 2014. Note the spikes. These are events that Te Hiku Media broadcasted — kapa haka, manu kōrero, waka ama, Ngāpuhi Festival, etc. Each of these events allowed us to reach more people and raised the awareness of our organisation in the community. Te Hiku Media’s base audience grows steadily as a result of these promotional events. The two largest spikes are kapa haka… no surprise there 😉

Monthly growth in pageviews for tehiku.nz.

We’ve also noticed data spikes when an old interview in the Whare Kōrero gets a large viewership. It turns out that in these instances a kuia or kaumātua had passed away and someone in the whānau knew they could access the interview in our Whare Kōrero. Data like this demonstrate the value that our kaupapa provides to the community, and it highlights the importance of preserving and promoting te reo o te kainga.

Te Hiku Media have grown so much since first “going online.” We now ask ourselves how can we get more data to inform our decisions? Which collections are the most watched? Why do people spend more time watching one interview over another? We use Google Analytics at the moment, but when we consider the structure of our platform and the models we’ve created (e.g. we can include information about people and iwi in content), we may need to consider building in our own analytics so we can answer the questions that are important to us (building sometimes means incorporating an open source package, like Piwik).

We recently got back 100 transcriptions of old recordings, most in te reo Māori. We have hundreds more to digitise. Can you imagine uploading those tāonga to SoundCloud or Youtube? Neither can we. So our challenge is to find an innovative way that can enhance access to these rich, te reo Māori recordings. Simply chucking an audio file on a website isn’t the best, most innovative solution. We’re hoping to do some R&D and find a clever way to use these reo Māori tāonga to right shift all of Aotearoa so that Māori is as common as English.

About

Keoni Mahelona is a native Hawaiian who studied business and engineering in the States and moved to Aotearoa to study physics. He’s worked on driverless cars before Tesla was a thing, and shook hands with Hillary Clinton before he discovered the amazing Bernie Sanders. After his first, failed startup, he took solace in the Far North to help a Māori social enterprise innovate in an industry ripe for disruption.

Stay in touch

Te Hiku Media is on:
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Our mates at Figure.NZ and Te Pūnaha Matatini have asked us to talk about what innovation means to us. As the Innovation Partnership we bring together like minds to drive digital innovation in New Zealand. We believe that if we can put digital at the centre of our education, business and government, New Zealand will be more productive, efficient, and successful.

One of our focus areas is to drive innovation in government. We want to do this because we believe that the innovative adoption of technology in government can increase transparency and make it more accessible for all citizens. It is a lofty ambition, but one that we think is important to drive democracy and make sure that the government is accessible to the people they serve.

Figure.NZ’s boards help show why we want to bring innovation into government.

If we take a look at this chart, we can see that people’s willingness to vote online in 2012 went up in all age groups when compared to 2009 numbers. People want to vote online but unfortunately they can’t.

We reckon that it’s high time government offered online voting. Estonia has one of the most digitally advanced governments in the world, and they’ve been doing it (successfully) for years. Currently attempts to establish online voting in NZ have been delayed by concerns around privacy and security. As a country, we keep putting it in the too hard basket instead of coming up with innovative solutions to solve the problems.

At the same time, voter turnout is decreasing.

One of the many ways that we could attempt to combat decreasing voter turnout is to take democracy into people’s lives, and one way to do that is to take our democracy online.

Data also has an incredibly important role in the future of our democracy. An informed citizenry is essential to a thriving democracy (just look at what’s happened in the US where how people ‘feel’ about an issue has become more important than actual facts).

As technology becomes more pervasive, people expect innovative, technology-based solutions to their problems. Understanding what people want and expect helps organisations across all sectors figure out what areas they need to innovate in to stay relevant. Data is one of the many ways we can gain this understanding, and the democratisation of access to data is growing everyday.   

Data helps us show that the proof is in the pudding, and gives us one more way to tell our story.

See Joe’s FigureNZ data boards for more insights.

About

Joe is responsible for the day-to-day running of the Innovation Partnership, including keeping tabs on projects and members, and making sure that the Partnership keeps moving towards its goals.

Joe is the Founder of Lean Communications, a PR and Communications agency that specialises in providing support for technology and ICT clients. His background is in communications and project management.

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Agriculture used to be New Zealand’s main bread and butter. Our small Pacific nation at the edge of the earth was bred on a “number eight wire” mentality, where ingenuity and resourcefulness was at the core of what we did, and the number of sheep was ten-fold the number of people. Turning pieces of scrap metal into revolutionary ideas that caused the world to stand up and take notice is something we have always prided ourselves on.

William Gallagher, one of the many legendary innovators who invented the trusty electric fence and led the way in taking NZ agriculture into the future, personifies the very meaning of number 8 wire mentality. But it’s not only NZ—agriculture globally that has had to rely on innovation to keep up the pace to feed the world’s growing population, economically and also sustainably. Farming may not sound sexy when you are talking dirty gumboots and 4am wake up calls, but it’s always had innovation at its core. 

In the reforms of the 1980s, when government support and subsidies were removed from farmers, and interest rates were as high as 20%, farmers had to innovate to survive; innovate to survive; innovate to survive. And survive they did by diversifying their operations, exploring new markets, and restructuring the way they did business. All this while increasing productivity along the way. 

We still see that today in the face of volatility in primary sector commodity prices. Because of that, NZ is seen globally as a world leader in its field for agriculture.

Over the last ten years we have also seen a thriving tech sector burgeon—a test lab at the bottom of the world where people can get ideas to market quickly, test them on a small scale, and then take those ideas to the world. In fact, that is how our company, Figured, started two years ago, and how we have adapted our business model during that time by adapting and evolving quickly. The intersection of tech and agriculture was the foundation for growing our start-up Figured which is a SaaS farm management accounting tool that works hand in hand with Xero. You may think tech and agriculture couldn’t be further apart, but the similarities between the industries couldn’t be closer together, and farmers, whether they realise it or not, are using a lot of technology in their businesses. But over the last few years there’s a worrying trend.

I grew up on a sheep and beef farm, studied agriculture and am passionate about the industry. I chose to study agriculture at university, despite being told that it was the subject to do if you weren’t smart enough to do anything else, and have gone on to build my career on the foundation of my love of agriculture.

More than 1/2 of farmers are over the age of 45, a much higher proportion than many other industries, like software engineering . There is also a reduction in talented young people coming into the sector both on farm and in all tertiary education fields, with student numbers reducing from just under 14000 students in 2008, to just under 11000 in 2015.

The agriculture sector isn’t just practical—the industry requires not only on-farm skills, but business management, technology, and science for research and development. After all, something everyone on this planet has in common is the fact we require food, and food comes from the agricultural sector. Then we look at the burgeoning tech sector – $15b contribution to NZ GDP is now coming from the tech sector, but the shortage of homegrown skills to employ from, and intense competition for skills between many similar companies, means we are often having to look offshore for talent to fill the gap (we know this first hand at Figured trying to employ good development staff on our team!).

So, how do we build the talent pool for New Zealand’s two most important export sectors so we can face tomorrow’s future challenges, and continue to innovate? Because at the end of day, our next few generations have some serious tasks at hand, particularly with issues like climate change, and feeding the world whilst maintaining a sustainable environment.

How can the ag sector use technology to continue to innovate and adapt, to survive and grow? And how do we get our young people passionate about the challenge?

• We have learnt a lot at Figured. As a part farming, part fin-tech start up, we have really developed a culture that attracts a diverse range of talents, ranging from pure technology background to those with practical on-farm experience. Compared to a traditional corporate model, our team enjoy the speed and delivery of real innovation that people can see and touch soon after the idea has been created. With the average age of our team closer to 30, we’ve cultivated an environment which aligns closely to how our employees prefer to engage with their work—they’re digital natives who thrive in a flexible, non-hierarchical culture with transparent leadership.
• Education from early stages is critical. Traditional IT courses at primary and secondary school should be moving away from learning Word and Excel (we only use Google platform at Figured), to software design and coding, giving youth the opportunity to experiment and create. We also need to take away perceptions that the agriculture industry is not for our smartest talent as there is a wide number of opportunities in all fields related to food production that is critical to our country, and indeed the world, which doesn’t involve just getting your hands dirty. This starts with our educators.
• Creating safe spaces for people to fail is important, but do so quickly so we can adapt and learn—this is the core of innovation.
• With more the than 1/2 of farmers over 45, we need to not just solve problems for their generation but be forward-looking in the solutions that our next generation require. The youth of today were brought up with the Internet and mobile technology and find it second nature. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”.  We keep this mentality at the core of what we do at Figured by creating solutions that people don’t know can yet exist (yes, that’s even possible in the world of farm accounting!).
• Bringing broadband and connectivity to rural regions will make living in rural locations more attractive as people will still be able to connect, as well as manage their businesses more effectively (like using tools such as Xero and Figured).
• Encourage travel. I was fortunate enough to see many different countries, from India, China, the Middle East and Ukraine, to western countries like the US and UK as part of a Nuffield farming scholarship which enabled me to research technology and communication in agriculture. This opened up my eyes to the reality of challenges our sector faces, but also the opportunities that exist if innovation and technology can be implemented effectively. Travel also creates confidence in young people to go outside their comfort zone which is critical to an enquiring mind.

We always have had number 8 wire mentality—but we need to continuously re-wire it. Number 8 wire of today looks different from that of tomorrow, so we also need to ensure our future generations have the skills to solve the problems that don’t exist yet, and merging agriculture with technology is a good place to start the innovation journey.

About

Hailing from a sheep and beef farm near Taupo, Sophie Stanley shares her depth of industry knowledge as Head of Rural at start-up SaaS company Figured, which is Xero’s farm management accounting add-on partner. For a number of years Sophie worked in the rural banking sector, and in 2013 was awarded the prestigious Nuffield Scholarship, which enabled her to travel globally, researching the intersection of cloud technology and social media within agriculture. Upon returning from overseas, Sophie joined Figured as one of the first team members. Figured is now rapidly growing its business in NZ, Australia and the US working with leading rural banks and accountants.

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Innovation has become a bit of a cliché. The word has graced the spine of one-too-many books in the business section. As someone who researches and writes about innovation I find this painful to say but, if I’m honest, there was a whiff of the naughties about it in 2012 when Paul Callaghan and I wrote Get Off the Grass. Today we disrupt, we reimagine, or sometimes we rekindle.

So this week we’ve partnered with Figure.NZ to take another look – we want to reframe New Zealand’s conversation about innovation. This is not so say that innovation is no longer important in New Zealand. New Zealand’s research and development spending – one of the traditional proxies for innovation – has grown significantly over the last decade, especially in the business sector.

Yet we still lag behind many other countries in our spending on research and development, as you’ll see below. As a proportion of GDP we invest about half that of Australia and Singapore, a third of what Denmark and Finland do, and one quarter of what Israel does. This was essentially the story I told in Get Off the Grass, that we simply need to invest more in research and development, more in knowledge, if we wanted our economy to match those of other small advanced countries.

I’ve had many conversations about this since, and while many people agree, others find this statistic misleading. Some people tell me that we are more innovative than proxies like this suggest; that I’m just not looking in the right places. So our goal this week is to take a broader perspective. We want to look for innovation in unusual places.

In this broader sense, innovation is the creation and realisation of ideas that make people’s lives better. In some circumstances, this might be facilitated by businesses competing in markets to deliver better products or services. But at other times it will be about organisations in the voluntary sector challenging themselves to find ways to deliver better social services – or a not-for-profit finding new ways to encourage public discourse.

Indeed, there will be a second experiment underway this week. This week we are putting Figure.NZ’s platform for public display of data through its paces. Both the figures I’ve used above are built form data held by Figure.NZ. As the conversation develops you can follow the data our bloggers are using through their shared lists: my data board is here. I am really looking forward to seeing whether we can use these to enrich the types of conversations that are possible on social media using Figure.NZ’s portal to our data.

About

Professor Shaun Hendy is the Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini. Shaun teaches in both the Department of Physics and the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland, and has a range of interests, including materials science, innovation, science communication, and the use of evidence in public policy.

In 2012 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and in 2013 he was awarded the E. O. Tuck medal for research in applied mathematics. Shaun tweets (@hendysh), blogs, and has a regular slot on Radio New Zealand Nights as physics correspondent.

In 2012, Shaun was awarded the Callaghan Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize for his work as a science communicator. His first book, Get Off the Grass, co-authored with the late Sir Paul Callaghan, was published in 2013.

View Shaun’s Figure.NZ data board.

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