Smart thinking

Absolutely. I regularly say we should be investing in R&D around agriculture, but the point is that we are never going to meet our prosperity goals unless we diversify beyond that. It’s not a question of either/or.

You still have to add value to great ideas?
And not only that, you have to create a society where you want your young and talented people to see a future. If we suddenly get rich out of commodity prices or oil offshore, it doesn’t make New Zealand a more vibrant place to live.

That’s the other great thing about the knowledge sector. It brings gifted, talented, creative people into the economy in a major way, it creates a role for them in the economy, and it makes the country more interesting and exciting.

One concern I have is how the rest of the world sees us. Clearly, for countries that are poorer than us, it’s a country of great opportunity, but for Germany, for example, New Zealand is a place where you plant organic potatoes and look at your crystals or whatever.

That fact that you started Magritek must help give credibility to your message?
I don’t think I could be out there doing this if I wasn’t commercialising in some way. Otherwise it’s just talk.

For too long scientists in New Zealand have basically been in what I call almost entitlement mentality. Why isn’t the government spending more on science? We just go round and round in circles in this. It doesn’t cut much ice either on the left or right in politics. We haven’t seen major gains in investment there. We have to change the dynamic of the argument where we put a little more onus on ourselves, particularly if we want to encourage young people into science.

When I talk to my fellow scientists, I say this is how much my research has cost in hip replacements – and I can tell you the grants that I’ve had since the early 1990s are worth 600 hip replacements or 120 herceptin treatments for a year. Scientists move uncomfortably on their seats when I invite them to talk about their own funding. They say things like, “It’s been proven internationally that science has benefits for society.” Okay, that’s fine, but I don’t think that’s an argument that’s really going to change the whole nature of the way we look at R&D in New Zealand from a political point of view. We need more stories where it is clear that an investment in R&D has paid off in some way.

You talked about politicians and bipartisanship – do we need government help?
No, there’s an argument here that says it’s not about government help, it’s about us getting off our backsides and doing it.

That is true but I think governments can help. If you look at the small countries that have turned their economies around rapidly, it’s generally involved some sort of high-level goal setting, and some sort of political leadership around that. I don’t think it’s essential. It may be that politicians never get it. In a sense we have the capacity to do it ourselves. But we have to energise people and motivate people and get them thinking in a different way. The most important thing is to get a national conversation going where there’s an awareness building in the country about what we’re capable of and some excitement around what we can do using our brains, not just in technology and science, but in fashion and the creative sectors.

And some vision among younger generations?
That’s right. The most important thing is that kids see this country is actually going somewhere, that this could be a cool place to be smart.

In the very last bit of the book I talk about this issue of the parents of the kids who are abroad and talk about how little Johnny is doing well in New York. Well, actually, to be honest, so what? It’s not hard to do well in New York, and it’s not hard to do well in London. Kiwis are well educated and hard working.

What is really hard to do is what Richard Taylor has done [with Weta Workshop]. To me, if you can conquer the world from Auckland or Wellington, that is the really big question, and if we can start thinking that way, then it will happen.