Unravelling NZ’s ‘Innovation Puzzle’

It’s been a source of much puzzlement and discussion that, despite New Zealand ranking high on many of the metrics which would suggest we should be highly productive, we nonetheless aren’t compared to many of our OECD counterparts.

At a MoRST Chat Shop this morning, Forte Management’s Tony Smale discussed this ‘innovation puzzle’, arguing that New Zealand’s national culture is the predominant reason for this problem – Kiwis are more motivated by invention and the initiation of a process/product than they are by commercialisation and the implementation of a process/product. 
In talking about ‘thinking about the way we think about innovation’, he argues that, if we are to become truly productive and prosperous, we need not only to have the technical infrastructure in place, but also the cultural.


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