Ian Narev - New York-based management consultant
Ian Narev knows the value of the worldwide network of expatriate Kiwis. He got engaged to one of them last weekend.
Narev, a 34-year-old management consultant at McKinsey & Co in New York, went halfway around the world and found Naomi Harris, who was at Remuera Primary School with him in the 1970s. They didn't know each other then, but met through another Kiwi in New York.
A speaker at next month's Catching the Knowledge Wave conference, Narev says most Kiwi expats still dream about New Zealand and would love to help the country.
"New Zealanders working overseas are working in an international environment and have access to different people," he says.
"So involving 30 people - that is what Ireland did - and asking them to help whenever New Zealand needs help makes sense, because you are accessing the networks around those 30 people as well."
Friends describe Narev as "a star." He was literally a TV star at 12, when he appeared in TV2's Children of Fire Mountain (1979). He won the University of Auckland's senior prize in law and a scholarship to Cambridge, where he was the top master of law graduate.
He spent two years as a lawyer in Israel, then worked on corporate deals such as the privatisation of the railways at Auckland law firm Russell McVeagh.
"He has a prodigious intellect, an ability to get on with people and an ability to get solutions," says lawyer Adam Ross. "I expect Russell McVeagh would walk over broken glass to get him back."
Three of Narev's grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps. His parents, Bob and Freda Narev, both came to New Zealand as children, to be brought up by relatives here.
"We started with absolutely nothing," says Freda Narev. "We were helped on the way, and he [Ian] was very conscious of that and is very generous with voluntary work."
As a student and young lawyer, he was a youth leader in the Auckland Jewish community, running weekly programmes and summer camps for young people.
In 1990, he took a year out to attend a leadership training school on an Israeli kibbutz - arriving on the day during the Gulf War when gas masks were issued to Israelis. "I felt like I would leave my fate to fate," he says.
In New York, Narev has led consulting teams working with three of the top 10 US financial institutions. But he also donates time to the Robin Hood Foundation, which aims to end poverty in New York through projects such as high-quality preparatory schools in poor areas.
He is an expert in knowledge management - using the new technologies of e-mail and the internet. He says technology is allowing people to become real specialists in defined areas, while collaborating with others all over the world.
For New Zealand, this means "we need to identify as a country areas of specialisation which we can become world-class in." Then we need to support those areas at every level. Ian Narev speaks at a lunch at the Sheraton Auckland, Tuesday July 31, 12.15 pm, American Chamber of Commerce: Members $65, public $75, ph (09) 309 9140.
David Teece - Californian professor and millionaire entrepreneur
Leigh Teece won't forget her 50th birthday in a hurry. She was at Nelson last Christmas with her husband, Professor David Teece, and their four children, aged 4 to 11, in their holiday home overlooking Tahunanui Beach. And 150 of their friends flew in from the United States.
"They made their own way over here," says Leigh Teece, an American who was back holidaying at Tahunanui this week.
"Once they got to Nelson, we had four days of activities of different kinds, including a birthday party, Maori events and a New Year's Eve party.
"These people, many of whom had never experienced New Zealand before, were bowled over."
Two couples have since decided to buy properties in Nelson and Queenstown, and Leigh Teece's mother has bought the house next door.
The New Year's Eve party culminated in a spectacular beach fireworks display, which was enjoyed by the whole community. It was David Teece's way of giving something back to his country.
Born in Blenheim 52 years ago, Teece is director of the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organisation at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is also a millionaire entrepreneur. In 1988 he organised some of the world's leading experts in economics, finance, business, law and public policy into a "virtual" firm, the Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG), which floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 1997.
In 1999 he led a consortium that bought the Christchurch sports clothing manufacturer Canterbury. Last year, with two Auckland partners, he started a merchant bank, i-cap, which is investing $100 million in growing New Zealand businesses.
Teece says New Zealand's economic reforms created "a very favourable business environment," which is "still a secret in most parts of the world."
He believes the country now needs "entrepreneurial leadership with a global vision" and global networks.
"New Zealand is constrained by a dearth of entrepreneurs who understand building an enterprise of global scale."
He praises the chief executives of New Zealand companies such as Genie Systems, which have moved to the United States while keeping research and development here.
"If you try to sell into this market, your chances of doing it remotely are extremely low," he says.
"The paradox of the internet is that location still matters. You have to have your ear to the ground, because moving information around is very different to moving knowledge.
"Once relationships are established, you can operate from a remote location. But until they know who the customer is, face-to-face contact is required."
New Zealanders already live in every key market in the world, but New Zealand companies have no idea who they are. "This expatriate community is neither used nor, frequently, aware of opportunities in New Zealand," he says.
"Job No 1 for the New Zealand Consulate is to develop a list of expatriate New Zealanders."
Robert Wade - economic development expert
When Robert Wade was in Peru a few years ago, he found himself the only other New Zealander at a conference where former Finance Minister Ruth Richardson was extolling New Zealand's "wonderful economic reforms."
Wade couldn't stomach it. Although there to talk about India, he used half his time to "very academically, very seriously, very non-inflammatorily give other sides to the [NZ] story.
"I was not at all prepared for the vehemence of her reaction," he says. "She really went ballistic. She became extremely aggressive, very ad hominem, but didn't seriously engage with the points I made."
The incident seems typical of Wade. He is one of the world's leading experts on economic development, described by his friends as "scholarly." He believes passionately that development cannot be left to the free market.
His sister, Judy Zavos, describes him as "immensely focused." When the Herald phoned him in Berlin last Sunday, he had just completed a triathlon; he has been running marathons and then triathlons since 1984, when he turned 40.
"He's an academic, but he also has the soul of a poet," Zavos says. "When he's doing his marathon runs through Sussex Downs [where he has a house], he's exalting over the countryside."
As a student at Otago in the 1960s, he went on a field trip to Pitcairn Island. When his colleagues left he stayed on to take part with some of the islanders in a hazardous, 18-hour voyage in a longboat to an island called Henderson.
"It was very dramatic being out in the middle of the Pacific on a small, open boat," he says.
"The great legends of Pitcairn Island relate to occasions when they got caught in storms and sailed up and down, looking for Henderson, or looking for Pitcairn, and couldn't find it."
Later, he spent two years working in Italian vineyards while researching his doctorate on local land reform. Wade spent years in India and South Korea, studying collective irrigation schemes. He wrote books about both countries before writing Governing the Market, about state-led development in Korea and Taiwan, in 1990.
If New Zealand leaves its future to the market it will lose people, because the country is not big enough for innovative clusters to form naturally, Wade believes. New Zealand will become "a short-stay entrepot for high-skilled human capital from developing countries on the way to Australia." He recommends a high-powered state agency to help high-tech companies to grow, arguing that high-tech businesses have more opportunities to increase productivity than businesses in traditional sectors.
New Zealand could also learn from Korean and Taiwanese efforts to lure their skilled people home, he says, including developing a database of New Zealanders abroad and linking them with potential employers here.
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