Growth forum issues tough challenges

By RICHARD WOOD

New Zealand information and communications technology exporters should support multinational involvement, get over their fixation on innovation and employ more foreigners.

Those were some of the strong opinions expressed at the information and communications technology (ICT) taskforce discussion held at the Software Association meeting last week.

More than 50 software and electronics industry representatives attended, and six members of the Government's 11-strong ICT taskforce were present to hear feedback on their report.

The taskforce vision of 100 $100 million ICT companies for New Zealand by 2012 was largely accepted.

But there was wide-ranging discussion on how to achieve it. Ideas included boosting ICT education, overcoming the "tall poppy syndrome" and commercialising ideas.

Former Intel New Zealand boss Scott Gilmour said New Zealand needed to encourage multinational companies to set up here.

"It would be lovely to see all the ownership stay here and all the wealth created here, but the reality is you can't do it. We've got to bring in capital and there is a lot of good news in that."

Gilmour said other successes would spin off larger companies' efforts just as they had off large local firms such as Christchurch-based Tait Electronics.

"People get this education, experience, confidence, and money and can go off and do their own thing.

"So let's bring in NetIQ, Symantec, Microsoft and Intel. We'll take their money, experience, and knowledge and leverage it and turn it over. That's how we'll get these 100 big companies growing."

Greentree International executive director Peter Dickenson also took a hard line.

"I'm sick of innovators and I'm even more sick of entrepreneurs," he said.

"We believe within New Zealand, and particularly in this sector, that it is absolutely fantastic that you have an idea and you have a go. What we've created as a result is so much fragmentation and splintering and lots of tiny little organisations."

In one company Dickenson was aware of, all of the 10 employees were working on their own projects at night. New Zealanders' independence stopped growth and was preventing firms from co-operating for the common good, he said.

Orion Systems CEO Ian McCrae said his company had too many product ideas. The real need was to commercialise those products internationally.

"We have an innovative culture. The problem we have is commercialising the things we produce, getting products into the US and Canadian market and others."

And Software Association president, and managing director of Data Group, Rollo Gillespie said the ICT export industry was "fixated with infrastructure".

"What we need is extrastructure. We need to sell before we worry about employing resources."

And he said exporters needed to employ people in the countries they were targeting. "We need to be employing Eskimos in Alaska, Guatemalans in Guatemala, North Americans in North America."

Xsol's John Blackham, a member of the ICT Taskforce, said New Zealand needed to produce an oversupply of expertise, but not for the obvious reasons.

"We need to flood the world with cheap Kiwi labour because our big problem is not education, it is having people with experience who have [built $100 million companies]."

People were not going to get that experience in New Zealand so they need to go overseas to get it, he said.

ICT taskforce member Number 8 Venture's Jenny Morel said meeting the target meant New Zealand would need more knowledge to put together arrangements such as original equipment manufacturer agreements and partnerships with other companies, as well as to get products into other markets.

"It's also an understanding of how you bring together bigger teams and how bigger companies work.

"That is what the taskforce believe is the number one issue."