New Zealand has a back-to-front approach to innovation, says Barry Vercoe, who will be a speaker at next month's Youth Innovation Awards in Tauranga.
"They seem to think innovation begins with a business model where you see a problem and think about how to innovate a solution," he said. "Thisthen has people thinking down a narrow track to come up with the solution to a particular problem."
Mr Vercoe spent two decades at the MIT Media Lab, which says on its website it aims to: "... go beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas".
Mr Vercoe said the MIT lab was probably the most famous innovation lab in the world.
"And the way we have always done it there is we have an open environment. There is lots of lateral thinking and students are all dreaming up new things, not trying to solve pre-existing problems."
"The first thing should be the invention and creation of new ideas. At MIT, we found innovation really happens when there's a clash of cultures and a clash of different ways of doing things. That's when there's a lot of cross-fertilisation. In New Zealand, we seem to have a backwards idea of thinking of a business model, then trying to come up with something that works in that business model."
