Viewpoint

Blueprint for Change?

Horace R. Moore

The Minister of Research, Science and Technology has issued a Blueprint for Change with the statement that:

This blueprint represents one outcome of the Foresight process. It provides the blueprint for a framework designed to ensure that Government's investment in RS&T is directed towards stimulating the development of a knowledge society in New Zealand.

A mandate for the Blueprint's content and positions is implied by reference to a series of Foresight-sponsored public conferences and consultations with individuals and groups, but they are not identified. Accordingly, one can only speculate as to how many of the 31 "Science Providers" (9 CRIs, 7 Universities, 15 Research Associations and Organizations) listed on Technology New Zealand's Web site contributed input to the Blueprint and positively endorse its adoption as government policy for research, science and technology investments.

Further, if such a consensus exists, it implies that a change of watershed proportions has occurred in the views of New Zealand scientists and technologists concerning the restructuring of the country's science policy and processes since the 1996 survey of that same group of key contributors by Jack and Dianne Sommer who reported that: "Regrettably, at this point in time the results are strongly negative."

The subject document is not a "blueprint" in the sense of being a set of practical guidelines that have been developed constructively through logical analysis of relevant facts and acceptable premises. To the contrary, it reads more like a paternalistic manifesto couched in language so verbose that it verges on obfuscation. As a statement of the government's policies and procedures for its research, science and technology investments, what is one to make of such visionary proclamations as the following:

Government aspirations for New Zealand focus on building an enterprise economy, creating a culture of innovation, enhancing the roles of individuals, families, communities and the private sector, maintaining and enhancing environmental quality and building national identity and cohesion. Collectively, they create a vision for New Zealand's future as a knowledge society.

The Blueprint presents fourteen target outcomes that purportedly will "enrich the interpretation of the four science envelope goals. Each target outcome gives part of a vision of what New Zealand's future as a knowledge society could be like."

If this is a visionary statement, the guru must be in a trance. Why? Because these outcomes are either self-evidently desirable, or concern issues that have been discussed in prior studies sponsored and/or funded by the government. In other words, the Blueprint invites the uninformed to participate in a circular process wherein the same issues are repetitively identified with little effective effort committed to their resolution. This is duplicitous behavior unworthy of a government ministry.

Of greater concern, the Blueprint evidences little understanding of the key factors operative in the world of innovative technology that determine its relevance in economic terms. This concerns the nature of innovation, the development of technology, and the processes by which it contributes to a national economy. Briefly stated, innovation is a tangible expression of the utilitarian aspect of science. It qualifies as technology if it can be embodied in a practical form having a marketable value.

There are two markets for technology engendered by a nation's domestic science program. The primary market is created by an internal demand to transfer technology into the domestic bases of productivity and employment. But there is a secondary international market for innovative technology, not recognized in the Blueprint, which must be taken into account when planning a domestic science programme. In this ever-expanding globalized marketplace, technology is traded like a commodity, as was well attested by the sentiments expressed by then Monsanto Chairman, Richard Mahoney in the following 1993 statement:

Monsanto is not in business to do research. We are in business to take inventions, whether ours or brought from somewhere else, and convert them into useful products that society wants and will pay for. That is the reality we have to keep in mind.

A survey of 95% of world-leading R&D companies in the European, Japanese, and North American industrial sectors, covering 1990-1996 found that corporate reliance on imported technology rose dramatically as follows: in Europe from 1% to 38%, in Japan from 24 to 59%, and in North America from 10% to 50%. Accordingly, it is not surprising that in 1996 Mary Lowe Good, US Under-Secretary for Technology, estimated that "technology has accounted for at least one-half of the economic growth in advanced industrial nations over the last 50 years."

By failing to distinguish between the intrinsically different natures of a "knowledge society" and a "knowledgeable society" and, likewise, between an "information society" and an "informed society", Project Foresight has done a disservice to the debate about New Zealand's future. Obviously, New Zealand should aspire to be a better educated and more knowledgeable society whose citizens are well-informed and adequately briefed on all matters that concern their commonwealth. The merit of that aspiration is self-evident without need for visionary forecasting!

So, what does the Minister mean by "New Zealand as a knowledge society", and how shall such a future society be developed, structured, and function? The answers to such pertinent questions are certainly not clarified by the Blueprint. Obviously, it cannot mean that New Zealand will be transformed into an industrialized nation whose bases of productivity and employment are concentrated in factories turning out computers and the like. New Zealand does not have, nor can it reasonably expect to acquire, the natural resources, operational infrastructure, and capitalization needed to accomplish such an epochal transformation.

New Zealand does have the natural resources, an existing (albeit embryonic) infrastructure, and the possibility of attracting sufficient capital investment to facilitate the transference of innovative technologies into its existing sectors of production. Properly managed, such technological infusions will not only improve productive efficiency but also enable incremental expansion of the production base into new markets.

The dominant theme that inevitably emerges from such considerations as the foregoing is the key role assigned to "technology transfer", the implications of which have been commented on by Peter Trim and Steve Raines as early as 1991 when they perceptively observed that "Technology distribution is like all other forms of product distribution. Geographical locality and effective contact with the market backed by sociological and market research, are essential for successful sales." [Viewpoint, Sept 1991]

Accordingly, if the Minister is making technology the keystone of New Zealand's future economic well-being, it would be well advised to become better informed about the technology transfer process, as should the universities and particularly the private sector. The necessary methodology to do this has already been developed, proven, and institutionalized in other countries and can readily be adapted to New Zealand's specific needs. Then, future government funding of RS&T in the universities, CRIs, and the private sector could be guided by two different return on investment (ROI) criteria, one for the domestic technology market and the other for the international technology market. This market-based model offers the following three benefits:

• enlarges the scope of R&D that merits investment
• improves government's overall ROI from R&D investments
• motivates private sector to raise their notoriously low level of investments in R&D

The full implications, for New Zealand's economic policy, of the symbiotic realationship that exists today between technology and globalization goes far beyond the scope of this comment. Suffice it to say that it demands a paradigmatic change in the roles and relationships of the infrastructural institutions. Private industry, the SOEs and acadaemia must understand that being a vested stakeholder will be profitless unless they assume the responsibilities of becoming accountable change agents. Unfortunately, the Blueprint offers little guidance in this regard.

Horace R. Moore is a specialist in technology transfer, acting in the US as an advisor to numerous New Zealand companies.