The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has released its plans which will guide science investment all the way through to 2031.
They are organised around the Science Investment Plan’s four priority “pillars”: Technology for Prosperity, Primary Industries and Bioeconomy, Environmental Sustainability and Resilience, Healthy People and a Thriving Society.
The SMC asked experts to comment on the plan.
Rod McNaughton, Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland Business School, comments:
“The plans recognise that discovery, technology development and practical use need to be connected, but they do not yet show convincingly how that pathway will be supported. The shortcomings concern both the capabilities needed to put research to work and the room to pursue opportunities beyond existing priorities and markets.
“For example, biomedical and engineering biology innovations depend on health and primary-sector research to turn advances into practical benefits. Yet investment in those pillars is projected to decline significantly. We risk funding the technology while weakening the capabilities needed to put it to work.
“Earlier MBIE guidance allowed for discovery research beyond the pillars, but the new plans expect public investment to align with prescribed priorities. We need clarity about how excellent research outside those priorities will be supported. A science system needs room for discoveries that change its priorities.
“Industry-defined problems and co-investment can make research more relevant, but they also favour established firms and familiar markets. Entrepreneurs creating new markets may have neither an industry sponsor nor demand they can demonstrate in advance.
“Entrepreneurs often discover the most valuable application through testing with potential users. Funding should help them gather evidence and adapt their plans as they learn. Requiring a well-developed commercialisation strategy too early can exclude the experimentation needed to make that strategy credible.
“The plans acknowledge a larger public role where markets are still developing. But the challenge is how funding decisions can distinguish an idea nobody wants from an opportunity nobody has recognised yet.”
Conflict of interest statement: “Rod McNaughton is the academic director of the University of Auckland’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.”
Professor Troy Baisden, Co-President, New Zealand Association of Scientists, comments:
“The Pillar Investment Plans (PIPs) represent the culmination of ‘simplifying’ our research system onto four pages that might fit into the attention span of Cabinet Ministers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the result contains more gaps than sense, copying the rest of the reforms’ inability to accomplish much of anything besides cutting the jobs and investment in research, science, innovation and technology that we need to thrive as a nation.
“This started within this term of Government with two reports, on the research system and universities, by Sir Peter Gluckman and groups he led. The reports were delayed in their release, a few points chosen for implementation, and ignored or sidelined from there. The government’s big research institutes were rapidly merged and but the legislation to achieve the benefits of the mergers has been dumped in what we consider an inadequate and incomplete state. Legislation to progress Gene Tech, and the Metservice merger into ESNZ have not progressed at all.
“In a mess mostly left incomplete and unfinished, the Pillar Investment Plans represent a final step in the part of the story that was once simplified into saying our national research strategy would increasingly focus on squeezing more juice from already squeezed lemons. The release of the PIPs confirms to us that the strategy often has more to do with uprooting the orchards, while also getting more fruit to market faster. In the worst case, we might find we’ve undermined New Zealand’s historic success in the Deep Tech that benefits from our isolation but takes a winding decades-long path to commercial success.
“We’d warned previously about the single biggest error, producing many gaps, has been viewing Technology for Prosperity as a Pillar rather than enabling factors that cut across the other three pillars to enhance our success. At least many links across platforms are acknowledged.
“One of the most concerning examples of a gap is that mitigation of climate change (emissions reductions) appears near but not within the bullet points describing what “will be prioritised” in “ESR2 Actionable Climate Science”.
“Other gaps are more apparent if one considers how much the Pillar Advisory Groups in Research Funding NZ (RFNZ) reduce the quality of guidance compared to the Health Research Council (HRC). While clinical research remains a focus, there is an absence of clinical researchers in RFNZ roles that would ensure the prioritised research can be implemented effectively in our health system and population.
“On the upside, priorities make very good sense to advance science toward success in some areas, particularly aspects of Technology for Prosperity where placing focus into clusters and pathways is now seen as much more effective than the debate over whether we should be ‘picking winners’.
“However, we remain deeply concerned about the PIPs and the overall reform. We worry deeply that by focusing so much on delivering outcomes and simplification, we appear to be uprooting the fertile ground for the science needed to draw on when we face big challenges or develop success over a decade or two, ultimately paying off 5-10x or more what is invested.
“This is concerning when MBIE is also releasing its first version of NZRIS: after $15 million since 2019, we have a tool that is no better than funding web pages and can’t usefully track the relationship between funding and research outputs that led to any of the last five Prime Minister’s Science Prizes. Given that the reforms have reported, at least nominally, to the Prime Minister this seems very concerning. We would call on political parties to consider what aspects of the reform they would reverse or review, such merging the well-functioning HRC into RFNZ.”
Conflict of interest statement: “I have received funding for environmental and climate research from MBIE.”