Recovery road

Feel free to email your predictions. If they’re good enough, we will rustle up a prize. Without further ado ...

Greg Cross, chair, the Icehouse
I predict a breakout year in terms of export growth for some of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise’s Beachheads companies as the US economy recovers some more. Google will become more and more relevant for business.
My company, PowerbyProxi, will convert some of its exciting wireless power pilots into large commercial volumes. New Zealand’s exciting crop of SaaS companies like SLI Systems and Xero will hit critical mass, Cleantech 2.0 will arrive and we will see some hugely important new solutions for the first time.

What I really hope will happen is the rollout of innovative and courageous economic policy for New Zealand, which puts us on an accelerated growth trajectory in high value export earnings.

Caroline Dewe, CEO, Fronde Anywhere
One wish is that Apple will allow third-party developers to deliver applications direct to the iPhone.
Realistically, Google’s new phone and open approach to the developer community will make inroads into the iPhone market. We see continued growth and investment in innovative IT solutions in Southeast Asia; and the early stages of recovery in badly credit-crunched economies, particularly Europe. The latter will include a revisit of innovation projects shelved in 2008. Another wish is for a low and stable US dollar.

Tony Smale, Forte Business Group
Domestically we will keep searching (probably fruitlessly) for the answer to why we can appear to be so innovative but still produce mediocre economic outcomes.

I hope to see fresh thinking emerge about our economic performance. It is difficult if not impossible to solve a problem with the same thinking that caused it. Yet we keep on trying variations of the same thinking and expect a different result. According to Einstein that’s the definition of stupidity.

Justine Munro, Centre for Social Innovation
Real leaders will rise up who recognise that the only way to deliver more for less is through transformative innovation. That means starting with a clean sheet of paper and a real focus on what people want and need, not just tweaking the systems we have already.

We can increase our ability to get more of what we want for less if we start to build an ecosystem to drive and empower innovation.

Let’s start by creating a MindLab (Denmark) style public sector innovation unit; a school for social entrepreneurs on the UK model; and one or two standout public/private social innovation partnerships.

Donal Curtin, Unlimited economics columnist
A much better year for the economy — the fiscal and monetary policy afterburners are kicking in, the global credit crisis has eased, and we’re fortunate that Australia and our Asian neighbours are doing really well.

It’s a worry that our housing market has become so much stronger, so early in the piece. Let’s hope 2010 isn’t an early return to mortgage-funded living beyond our means. I hope that all the official taskforce work that’s gone into tax, infrastructure, catching up with Australia, national infrastructure, regulation, productivity and innovation, gets out of the laboratory and into production. And we don’t hang around for the Doha trade round to conclude but carry on bagging free trade deals of our own, as we have been doing with ASEAN, Hong Kong and others.

Richard Hollingum, the Department of Doing
It certainly appears the global financial crisis is behind us and consumer confidence is returning. Many Kiwi companies cut spending on product and business development during the crisis as a means to cut costs. As a trading nation, we desperately need to reverse this. Let’s see real investment in value-added foods, biotechnologies and agritech developments and less on low-returning commodities and property. As part of this we would love to see the trading banks ease off their reins and allow business to reinvest in business.

Grant Ryan, YikeBike inventor
We hope to ship oodles of YikeBikes!

What do you think lies ahead for 2010? Comment below or email your predictions.