Collaboration isn't enough to overcome size and scale in large markets such as China. Together, the companies involved (Sealord, Silver Fern Farms, Synlait Milk, Villa Maria Estate, Kono and Pacific Pace) represent approximately NZ$3 billion of New Zealand's worldwide trade.
In some contrast, Nestlé has revenue of about US$100 billion, Danone has $29.3 billion and Kellogg Company has $14.8 billion.
Playing in the same markets as the big companies puts the emphasis on finding ways of enticing customers to pay higher prices and/or some operational innovation that lowers costs.
Statistics New Zealand data on product innovation in companies employing more than five employees indicates only 17 per cent of New Zealand companies are active, in comparison with 23 per cent of companies in Denmark, 31 per cent in Finland and 28 per cent in Ireland.
Denmark, Finland and Ireland are all small countries with relatively small populations -- but they are reporting more innovation than New Zealand.
Innovation is linked to talent and the abilities of people to generate ideas from their knowledge and skills.
Management guru Gary Hamel, writing with Nancy Tennant (vice-president for Innovation and Margin Realization at Whirlpool Corporation) in Harvard Business Review in April outlined the five requirements:
Employees who've been taught to think like innovators
A sharp, shared definition of innovation
Comprehensive innovation metrics
Accountable and capable innovation leaders
Innovation-friendly management processes.
For Hamel and Tennant, the ultimate goal is a company where innovation is "built in," rather than "bolted on" -- where it is instinctive for every individual, and intrinsic to the organisation itself.
The farming side of the agricultural industry has a clear history of innovation, yet suffers from the 'farmers are too old to change' mantra.
This is despite ongoing evidence for adaptability. StatisticsNZ data on stock numbers gives evidence: sheep numbers are down and dairy cow numbers are up. Again. Of course they are -- market signals have been that dairying and dairy support makes more money than sheep.
What is now needed, however, is a science system that allows researchers to work with farmers to create new thinking and improved mitigation for the impacts of agriculture.
And an education system that encourages students into the disciplines that the world needs.
In New Zealand, the science funding system is not sufficiently stable to encourage the young to entertain science as a career.
And the NCEA system is not encouraging motivation or questioning in school leavers.
Requests from first-year university students for multi-choice questions and report templates make the point.
Innovation requires fresh thinking. Hamel and Tennant suggest this means challenging invisible orthodoxies, harnessing underappreciated trends, leveraging embedded competencies and assets, and addressing unarticulated needs.
"Our research and experience suggest that inquiry is at the heart of it. Innovators have an inclination and a capacity to examine what others often leave unexamined."
For New Zealand, this means giving researchers time to think about the challenges ahead, and work with farmers and consumers to identify what might make a difference.
Hamel and Tennant's research indicates companies serious about building an innovation engine need to upgrade the innovation skills of employees, agree on what counts as innovation, establish comprehensive metrics, hold leaders accountable for innovation, and retool the management processes so they foster innovation everywhere, all the time.
This should be a model for New Zealand's agrifood value chain, from farm and research organisation, though processing and marketing to the consumer. The revolution won't happen without inter-disciplinary research, enabled, perhaps, by the creation of a new centre focussed on farm to fork innovation.
Launching such an initiative would be a significant legacy for the Minister of Science and Innovation working with the Minister for Primary Production and the Ministers of Food Safety and of Communications and Information Technology.
But nor will it happen without rethinking the education system to encourage the spirit of inquiry innate in three year olds to persist.
New thinking required re-engineering, the very foundation of knowledge and advancement in New Zealand.
Farmers have done a huge amount in upholding the tradition of innovation; the processing and marketing companies now need to do their bit.
Following Hamel and Tennant's advice will result in a company "that can win, and win again, in the 21st century's creative economy".
Sounds just what the doctor ordered.
