Loomio
Wed 29 Apr 2015 1:09AM

Looking forward to 2025 – characteristics of a successful Christchurch tech sector

AES Anna Elphick (CDC Strategist) Public Seen by 297

Based on last week’s discussions, we have identified the following characteristics of a successful Christchurch tech sector.

Until Sunday 3 May we would like your feedback on - looking forward to 2025:

(1) Are these the right characteristics of success? Is anything missing?
(2) Are some characteristics more or less important than others?
(3) Are the descriptions and measures, found in this discussion paper about right?

1. Christchurch has a critical mass of internationally successful tech businesses

  • Have capability, resources and relationships to grow internationally and profitably
  • Are connected into global value chains and understand global needs and trends
  • Christchurch attracts and retains a number of large tech businesses

2. Christchurch’s tech sector is attractive to talent

  • Seen as an exciting career choice by diverse range of people
  • Christchurch is an education destination in tech-related areas
  • The tertiaries produce people with work-ready tech and commercial skills

3. The Christchurch tech sector is internationally recognised as a source of capability and innovation

  • Specific areas might include software and hardware development teams, power electronics, health, agritech
  • Attract customers, investment, talent and new businesses
  • National and international organisations look to Christchurch for tech-related solutions
  • Tertiary and research institutions work collaboratively with business on talent, innovation and capability

4. The Christchurch tech sector ecosystem is a point of competitive advantage and attraction

  • A vibrant, active range of networking and educational events
  • Tech businesses, educators etc understand and support each other and work together to solve problems
  • Overseas investors, entrepreneurs and supporters visit
  • Advisors and services are available which support international growth
  • Strong infrastructure for start-ups
  • Tech sector is supported by local government and our community
TB

Tim Bell Wed 29 Apr 2015 3:35AM

For "Christchurch’s tech sector is attractive to talent", you could add something like: - Secondary (and primary) school students have a strong awareness of opportunities in the sector, and know the skills and attributes they need to develop if they want a career in the industry.

ID

Ian Douthwaite Wed 29 Apr 2015 4:28AM

You've got a lot of descriptors in there, and not many that are that measurable. How about a good old-fashioned strategy with a single indicator: tech sector component of regional GDP. You can choose variety of targets: relative contribution of tech (relative to other sub-sectors); growth rates (absolute or compared to national or other sub-sectors).

JG

John Gallagher Thu 30 Apr 2015 5:55AM

Re: Some suggested "Adds" to the points Anne Elphick drew from last week's discussion

Anna Elphick (CDC Strategist) started a discussion in Christchurch Tech Sector Strategy:

Looking forward to 2025 characteristics of a successful Christchurch tech sector:

Based on last week’s discussions, we have identified the following characteristics of a successful Christchurch tech sector….

My responses:-

  1. My relation to this Loomio discussion:

I have not long joined and am just finding my way into this Loomio Tech Sector Strategy discussion, and will introduce myself more fully shortly.

I felt when I read Anna’s summation that it might be useful to offer some quick additions, preceded by a few brief remarks as follows to give a wider context from which they come.

  1. The context for my additions to Anna’s summation:

I am here adapting to Christchurch high-tech development sister city proposals I originally developed in a wider New Zealand context.

My suggested additions to Anna’s points are based on what might be accomplished if Christchurch schools and universities, high-tech, business, media and other relevant organizations came to connect regularly and build relationships with international peers through ICTs/social media.

Although not currently much used that way, sister city relationships could be transformed to provide a highly effective vehicle for this if they were infused with appropriately effective regular use of ICTs/social media.

For instance, Christchurch has sister city relationships with English-speaking and Asian areas, including high-tech areas like Seattle in the US and Wuhan in China.

Consider, for instance, the contributions young Christchurch people could go on to make to both high-tech and wider development, and their enlarged career prospects, if they were to be educated in school and university classes that that connected regularly with peer classes in Seattle and Wuhan, with curricula that drew on such contexts (amongst other things)?

It could be especially rewarding to look into ways Christchurch might also thence be able to position itself as a technology-transfer hub between these centres. I will shortly add some specific illustrations of some such possibilities in a separate box below this one.

As a more general thought experiment, consider how much more effectively and confidently Christchurch/NZ might now be able to foot it in Asia and China and build up export surpluses if these sorts of connection had been built up via cities throughout our country over the last 2-3 decades.

This has been proposed to national and local governments, including the Christchurch City Council.
(See my blog: "Innovative Sister City Networking for Global Solutions" at http://www.village-connections.com/blog/?p=3813

If you would like more details, see also:
"Using technology to connect well in an interconnected world"
http://www.village-connections.com/blog/?p=6966
&
"Sister Cities as Asian Century Brokers"
http://www.village-connections.com/blog/?p=6674)

  1. Anna’s summation and my suggested additions:

4. The Christchurch tech sector ecosystem is a point of competitive advantage and attraction

Add:
Which is greatly assisted by Christchurch schools and tertiary educational institutes, along with high-tech, media and business organizations, being connected in on-going relationships with international peers, facilitated by the use of ICTs/social media.

  • A vibrant, active range of networking and educational events

Add:
and supported by a sister city communications infrastructure that helps generate on-going productive events and amplify what can be accomplished with them

  • Tech businesses, educators etc understand and support each other and work together to solve problems

Add:
including through facilitative sister city communications infrastructures

  • Advisors and services are available which support international growth

  • Tech sector is supported by local government and our community

Add:
that understand and can contribute much more effectively to the sector because they are regularly engaged in using it to connect with counterparts elsewhere, including specifically through (new) sister city structures.

SM

Sheralee MacDonald (CDC) Thu 30 Apr 2015 8:35AM

Keen to see if we are on the right track with these characteristics so will start shoulder tapping some of you!

@benkepes , you mentioned in your intro you had some ideas about NZ not trying to be another silicon valley. Do you feel these characteristics reflect the Chch/NZ context?

SM

Sheralee MacDonald (CDC) Thu 30 Apr 2015 9:15AM

What do you think of these suggested measures of success of being attractive to talent? (from p2 of Looking Forward to 2025 discussion paper):

  • Tech sector employment, particularly in high-wage areas, increases faster than in other New Zealand cities.

  • Christchurch attracts people into tech sector roles from outside Christchurch and outside New Zealand (returning New Zealanders and migrants).

  • The Christchurch tech sector doesn’t experience skills shortages or struggle to hire new staff.

  • Christchurch tech sector salaries are on par with Auckland and Wellington.

  • Christchurch tech-related tertiary qualifications are oversubscribed.

Note that the stats in this background paper shows that we aren't currently meeting them.
@simonmeehan , @andrejfalout @amarverma @edwegner ?

BK

Ben Kepes Thu 30 Apr 2015 9:56AM

Here's a talk I gave in Iceland last year, in which I encouraged Iceland not to try and create its own Silicon Valley.

http://startupiceland.com/2014/06/12/why-we-dont-need-a-silicon-something-in-iceland-ben-kepes-startup-iceland-2014/

The synopsis is this... Xero is, in my view, very much an outlier. There is no structural reason why a SaaS product is easier to build in NZ than elsewhere. As such undifferentiated product initiatives are in direct competition with every other country in the world - we don't have the talent pool or any unique advantages to do this fundamentally differently.

What we do have, however, is some fairly unique attributes. Our agricultural sector, for example. Our DIY mentality. Our geographic isolation. Our prstine environment. How can we leverage these to create truly unique businesses?

An example I use is Invert Robotics, a cool CHCH company doing robots for working on staliness tanks. We (obviously) have a big dairy and winemaking industry in this country - Invert takes this industry, sees a problem that exists and creates an innovative solution.

While we have long struggled with how to enable technology transfer to occur between research institutions and commercial entities, it seems to me that there is some incredible science at places like Lincoln Uni, Landcare etc that we can commercialize in a defensible way.

Of course it's not as sexy as building the next "billion dollar business from the beach", but I suspect there is a somewhat immature, and ultimately risky exuberence that the (admittedly totally awesome) unusual outside of the norm success that Xero has seen has created...

Just my 2 cents - and excuse the typos - 3am in Las Vegas!

DJ

David Jackson Thu 30 Apr 2015 9:03PM

@benkepes Good points, the Canterbury economy is still strongly influenced by the Agribusiness Sector, which we are already global leaders in many areas including small seeds, dairy, etc.

While producing the next big SaaS product is sexy and potentially has a huge prize, it's also risky and capital intensive.

We already have some great success in the agritech area with Tru Test, Waikato Milking Systems and I am sure there are more.

The characteristics of a successful tech sector as explained above looks good, the one area that is missing may be having innovative potential customers nearby. This can be vital for small start-ups to help commercialise their business. We have some of these just an hour down the road.

HL

Hamish Laird Thu 30 Apr 2015 11:46PM

Ben, David, @benkepes @davidjackson. One of the largest agribusiness supply companies in Christchurch is Trimble. And when you look at what some of the tech people who work there do, it has very little to do with agriculture. They do hardware and software and GPS and GIS and the like. To focus on end use markets to answer the "what the tech sector looks like" question does not provide insight or guidance. And focusing on local markets limits growth potential. The focus needs to be on the trends. Trends happening are - Disintermediation, companies requiring global reach at very small scale, shortages of fresh water, increase in pollution in developing countries, large corporate buyers outsourcing to buy solutions while retaining sales channels, energy transition, entry of massive new players into global dairy and talent retention becoming harder. Of all the characteristics the attractive to talent is the most important with the ecosystem being up there with it. Once you attract talent then good things happen.

International businesses already choose Christchurch for the talent.

HSC

Helen Shorthouse, CDC Sat 2 May 2015 1:19AM

What do you think about the "recognised as a source of capability and innovation". @hamishlaird talks about the opportunities for agri and some global trends. Is there anything else? What about @markbillinghurst augmented reality; @craigrichardson1 security / big data; @sinclairhughes and @gaberijpma health; @rolandsommer and @trevorlaughton power electronics; @terrypaddy 'clean green'? Anything else? And are these the right measures?

JG

John Gallagher Sat 2 May 2015 2:22AM

Re @markbillighurst virtual reality:

Thanks Helen for referring to @markbillinghurst. The Hit Lab Mark heads at Canterbury University is an obvious reference point for Christchurch high tech innovation.

Could its potential be further amplified if it worked to become a hub between two high-tech nodes?

Specifically, could it be useful to connect with both Seattle (the Christchurch sister city from which Hit Lab originated in 2002 after co-founder Mark did his PhD over there) and Wuhan (another high-tech centre and Christchurch sister city, in China?)

Canterbury University has an agreement with Wuhan to take quite number of doctorate students from there.

Could students and others from both cities collaborate alongside our own to explore and identify possibilities for:
1. Connecting technology supply and demand between these centres?
2. Desirable joint research and innovation projects?

Mark responded very positively to the idea of building such research connections between Seattle and Wuhan when I ran it past him after he did a presentation at an Epic Ministry of Awesome meeting.

Might it be useful for Christchurch to look into more potential ways of developing as an innovative hub between sister cities? Could doing this provide opportunities for the city to create and test hub platforms from which it could also link with other, non sister city nodes?

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