Outing the hidden value of R&D
30/01/2006
Anthony Scott, executive director, Association of Crown Research Institutes, argues that it is time to celebrate the importance of R&D to New Zealand.
As New Zealand.s economy seems set to enter a rough patch, the Crown Research Institutes will face a critical test of their central task of developing knowledge into benefit for New Zealand.
Will this year demonstrate that public and private sector entities regard R&D as an optional extra . a cost which can be jettisoned . or an investment which underpins performance and spurs advance?
Advanced economies understand that it is almost impossible to stay in business let alone get ahead of the game, without R&D investment.
Their global-scale, hero companies in software, consumer electronics, and biotechnology create the buzz and endorse the value of R&D. Smaller companies see R&D as a route to riches.
Ours is the only first world economy reliant upon primary production. It isn.t sexy, and so the R&D it relies on is often overlooked.
What grabbed your attention this summer: the story on the clover root weevil parasite AgResearch is now trialling, or the new iPOD? If, like most, it was the iPOD, you will have missed the fact that the research will save the country hundreds of millions of dollars.
Nevertheless, at a corporate level, R&D has been gathering pace. Investment in R&D via Government (including CRIs), universities and the private sector rose 13 per cent between 2002 and 2004 to $1.6 billion.
Can we be confident that this indicates R&D is now seen as a long term investment, not to be derailed by a little ‘rough patch.?
But I worry when, in a New Zealand Herald report earlier this month, Owen Hembry quotes a businessman asking what is the most significant output of CRIs. It.s as if R&D is all about big-ticket, prominently branded things . just what gets cut when rough patches come along.
Ironically, it is the success in integrating knowledge into products, processes, jobs and our environment that sells the value of CRI R&D short.
It is not our job to become billion-dollar companies, subsidiaries of multi-nationals, develop companies to compete against the private sector or enter global deals solely for revenue.
We help sectors to develop and succeed, usually staying in the background.
So I offer a proposal . only partly tongue in cheek - to bring R&D from the shadows.
It would apply to knowledge forming part of a much larger output . much as the clover root weevil parasite contributes to the wealth and welfare of each of us.
It would also apply to R&D output commissioned by someone else (increasingly, private sector firms). It could be applied retrospectively to things we now routinely use but need reminding owe their origins to CRI science.
My model is Intel. Its R&D knowledge is embedded in the Pentium chips that power most PCs . hidden except for the ubiquitous sticker ‘intel inside..
Now apply that to CRIs. Our brand values are a plus to marketers: we are ethically and socially responsible, good employers, do research to benefit New Zealand, and pursue excellence in all we do.
The benefits of the little sticker (CRI inside?) to New Zealand would be immense. It would indicate how dependent this country is upon R&D, stimulate national pride, encourage investment, and inspire study and career choices.
Imagine seeing that stamped on milk factories, timber mills, meat processors, furniture plants, fishing boats, hospitals, office blocks, museums, packing houses, ski-fields and vineyards, dams, cafés, police stations and policy documents.
The list is as big as our economy. Imagine it on each tree, fish, wine bottle, grass, fruit, machinery, material and so on.
Where would one stop? Hundreds of thousands of jobs are dependent upon the R&D embedded in the products and processes that keep provincial New Zealand producing and exporting, and our metropolitan areas servicing.
And how do you stamp cleaner air, water and pure birdsong and undamaged trees with the underlying intellectual property which has either restored or conserved such environmental wealth for our recreation and tourism?
So the challenge is to begin this year not just anticipating rough patches but knowing that what has got us through, and will again, is the quality of our R&D. Just look around you.
The New Zealand Herald published this article as Research vital to making headway on 30 January 2006.
