Dialogue: Nation must choose to surf Knowledge Wave or sink

We need to reinvent and reinvest in ourselves to profit from knowledge-based opportunity. The Knowledge Wave project is a call to action, writes CHRISTOPHER TREMEWAN*.

Knowledge is a new force driving the world's most successful societies, replacing the old stores of wealth - land, industrial machines, capital - as the new currency of social and economic success.

It is a trend creating global shifts which are as profound as they are swift and, after 40 years of economic underperformance, New Zealand cannot ignore the implications of this new era of knowledge-driven growth any longer.

Between 1960 and 1997, New Zealand's output per head of population grew by 60 per cent, next to an average 150 per cent-plus for any comparable country. The need for a new strategic approach to regaining our prosperity and competitiveness is clear.

There are good recent examples to learn from. Countries such as Finland, Ireland, and Israel have all viewed their once similar situations as constructive crises and responded with nationally accepted strategies. They have been rewarded with high growth rates and a renewed sense of common purpose from such leaps of imagination.

New Zealand can do the same, but needs to fashion its own vision. It is time to reinvent and reinvest in ourselves to ride this wave of knowledge-based social and economic opportunity.

That is why the University of Auckland has initiated the Catching the Knowledge Wave project. Backed by the Government, but also with high-level input from Opposition parties, and business, academic and community leaders, the project is a call to action.

It asks questions such as: what policies does New Zealand need for a culture of innovation, enterprise and lifelong learning? What are the new roles for government?

How do we make the most of the knowledge we already have? How do we guarantee that the best new ideas become promising new businesses?

How do we accelerate the pursuit and use of our knowledge so that outcomes are achieved as quickly as possible?

The Knowledge Wave project is committed to starting to answer those questions.

This process does not amount to a simple quest for greater material wealth, although New Zealand needs to grow faster if it is to retain its First World status.

Rather, it is about creating a politically stable, socially cohesive society that New Zealanders will be proud to live and work in, return to from overseas, and where the citizens of other countries will seek to live and invest.

This vision is not solely about information technology. Although its impact is huge, the arrival of IT can be likened to the way that electricity transformed people's lives early last century - a spur to development rather than development itself.

IT speeds up and deepens the transfer of knowledge, dramatically expanding our capacity to build new understandings, communities, industries and markets. Yet most of its tools will soon be as unremarkable as a 60-watt bulb, a background convenience which helps us all to do remarkable things.

In short, the knowledge wave is upon us. What matters now is how well this country, with its overdependence on low-value agricultural commodities in a world of low-cost competitors, can ride the wave.

Making knowledge a key driver of the New Zealand economy is a route to getting off the downward agricultural price spiral, as an increasing number of innovative New Zealanders are already recognising.

Signposting the future are companies like Wellington's Compudigm, which makes visual maps of complex data; Southland's Topoclimate, finding micro-climates on dairy farms for tulips and Japanese wasabi; or New Zealand Dairy Ingredients, which extracts high-value food and medical additives from low-value milk.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings production relies on local creativity harnessing powerful software, while Dunedin's Animated Research made the America's Cup intelligible to a global television audience of landlubbers.

Then there are new medical therapies such as those being developed by NeuroNZ, a company spun out from the University of Auckland; or the discovery of a natural alternative to antibiotics for throat infections by the BLIS strategic alliance with Otago University.

New Zealanders tapping local sensibilities to influence international culture are more evidence of the same trend, from the clothes of Karen Walker to the songs of Neil Finn. These are the building blocks of a knowledge society. We need to create far more of them.

In some respects, New Zealand is well placed to embrace knowledge as a new engine of social and economic development. We are a relatively wired nation and governments have recently begun to focus on knowledge and innovation policies.

Perhaps most difficult to appreciate is how knowledge has become such a force in successful societies. Unlike most goods and services, knowledge is powerfully self-perpetuating. It cannot be exhausted or overused. Instead, using knowledge routinely creates new knowledge.

Knowledge-based industries tend to produce specialised goods that are priced on their sophistication rather than their cost of manufacture. They increasingly recognise the value of cultural, ethnic, aesthetic and lifestyle differences. National identities are shaken up, but diversity is also more cherished.

While often expensive to produce, much new knowledge also becomes freely available. When governments ensure that knowledge is accessible, this has a democratising impact, creating a force for social as well as economic action.

This kind of society would explicitly nurture the growing importance of our intangible and cultural assets. It would reframe how we regard knowledge so that new opportunities for social and economic participation begin to open up.

We need to find the settings of a creative framework that is right for our country, while accepting that unless we reinvigorate our creativity, innovation and learning we will continue to slip behind the countries we once thought of as poorer.

* Christopher Tremewan is pro vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland and chairman of the Knowledge Wave project team.

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Online feature: The knowledge society

Catching the
Knowledge Wave project