Growing a successful high-tech manufacturing (hardware) sector in Christchurch
Anna Elphick (CDC Strategist)
Public
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How can we retain and grow an internationally successful high-tech manufacturing sector in Christchurch?
- How can we respond to opportunities and challenges presented by global trends?
- How can we grow from our strengths, retain value in Christchurch and remain competitive?
For the latest research and key insights read the background paper.
Please remember to refresh the discussion regularly so you can see the latest comments.
Hamish Laird Tue 28 Apr 2015 1:38AM
And a final note on why we need to stay with the hardware - This from Marc Andreesen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen)
"The other reason for the recent hardware renaissance is the simple way cycles work. Not much hardware innovation has happened, because there have been no hardware startups,” Andreessen says. “So there are a lot of bottled up ideas like drones and robots that just did not get developed in the last 15 years,” he said.
“You see this whenever there’s a missing gap of time where there’s no innovation in a category,” he added. “At some point, it’s like it’s spring-loaded. It just comes back. It comes roaring back.”.
ChCh is a hardware town and now is the dawn of a hardware resurgence.
Hamish Laird · Tue 28 Apr 2015 1:30AM
@craigrichardson1 I agree with you that the value is in the ideas and the people. Having Christchurch known for and awesome at one thing is economically risky but also rewarding. (The dairy industry is a nice example). The skilled labour pool in Chch is relatively small so the effect of one company's misfortunes in the labour market are large. Retaining enough variety of companies is important to recruitment and retention. Maybe this means that a large company cannot be headquartered in Christchurch as the labour market is too small.