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

Congrats to CDC on this initiative and for seeking input from a wide range of contributors. I’ve yet to read all the discussions - but am impressed by the amount of knowledge sharing and time voluntarily given.

My suggestion relates to - Characteristic 2, “Christchurch is attractive to talent” and Characteristic 3, “... is internationally recognised as a source of capability and innovation”.

What they would look like should perhaps include a key point of difference for Chch - which would be an inclusive, collaborative network of support that:
* covers the full cycle of the tech sector from primary school to retirement.
* provides support for teachers and lecturers - as well as for students and graduates.
* provides upskilling and other support for people who are already in Chch and have IT skills but don’t have jobs in IT - whether because they’ve been made redundant or because they have come to Chch with qualifications that recruiters in Chch are not familiar with.
* encourages and provides systems for mentoring and ongoing upskilling and cross-training of employees - which is a key requirement in attracting and retaining millennials.
* utilises the knowledge and experience of those retiring, whether from IT industry or teaching/lecturing, to continue to play a part within the support network.
* recognises and utilises learning models like the one developed by Renae Mackie and the students at IT HOTHOUSE - and the not-for-profit community models like addington.net.nz and the Computers in Homes programme, including the DORA digital bus.

I will provide the specifics and references during the next phase - “feedback about what we should do to realise success”.

Since I’ve not yet introduced myself, my input is based on:
* issues I observed whilst Canterbury Branch Secretary of IITP.
* my experience as a business owner in Brisbane and in managing IT businesses/operations in Brisbane and Chch.
* research on attracting and retaining staff - millennials to baby boomers.

I have really enjoyed catching up on the feedback in the various threads over the last couple of weeks. I commend the thoughtfulness of the input from all who are contributing. My comments that follow are given with equal openness and positive spirit.
Personally I really believe that as a country, in order to get the best out of our entrepreneurial abilities and efforts and to optimise the social and economic benefits both for New Zealanders’ and others internationally who are touched and impacted by those efforts we need national dynamic NZ tech/innovation system that is brilliantly joined up and collaborative. I feel that, even in 2015, this may require potentially a fundamental mind (and action) shift though right across the current system.
So I’m definitely not a fan of statements in the Discussion paper along the lines of “Christchurch has a higher rate of tech sector start-ups than other cities in New Zealand.” Or “Generate a higher proportion of their revenue from exports than tech businesses in other New Zealand cities.”
The joined up NZ system fully encourages and perhaps even positively demands that there is a free flow (national and international) of ideas, capability, capital and networks throughout the country. Under this system no one wastes time pondering things like “what would make our town A more competitive than town B” or “How can we poach students from City C for our tech ecosystem in Town D. Instead, we just accept that people make the choices they do about where they spend passages of their lives and that these are much more likely to simply reflect (ever changing) personal preferences and circumstances and actually not driven materially by assessments of whether or not NZ regions, cities or towns have better or worse tech/innovation systems. Surely the other underlying great news is that NZ has a number of stunning places where this activity can and does take place. Culturally, we make a bit of an art at times it seems of looking inwards at ourselves and overstating the relevance and importance of one place’s ascendancy or positioning over another’s.
I challenge anyone to cite an example of an international customer who gives a monkeys about the “Auckland-ness” or “Christchurch-ness” of a NZ based business they are dealing with. It might even be pretty difficult to find any who “materially” (I mean, would it really make a difference to their decision to buy a product or service from NZ tech/innovation company) care about the “New Zealand-ness either (OK, Icebreaker excepted).
What I do see all the time is that New Zealand has an established and growing reputation as a country that rates well internationally as a generator of ideas, innovation and world-class business smarts. Great!
Having the privilege of looking under the bonnet now of nearly 200 NZ tech companies that NZVIF has invested in over the last 13 years alongside our Angel and VC investment partners, I would make a couple of other observations:
• There has been some great discussion around the issue of the importance or otherwise of aiming to have a core group (3-5) of significant sized (>$500m) tech companies in ChCh. Indeed the Discussion paper notes one potential measure of “Critical Mass” as being “Christchurch has X number of internationally successful tech businesses of Y scale.”
Picking up on a flavour of what some others have already discussed, I think we need to view a flourishing tech/innovation scene as one with companies (and their respective founders, staff, boards etc.) right across the spectrum of timeframes, scale and “success”. But all in their own way positively contributing the overall dynamism of the system. An analogy within the NZVIF portfolio would be that we have maybe 10-15% of the companies who hand on heart pursuing a game changing/disruptive/hugely internationally scalable opportunity and that’s fantastic. Xero is the outstanding example of this. But there are equally important sub-strata’s of companies beneath those “hit it out of the park” plays. And this goes right through to the most nascent of entrepreneurial endeavours in the form for example of Lightning Lab graduates – often first time founders/teams still at the very early stages of business model discovery.

I’m not sure that even if we wanted to we can necessarily plan or legislate what the “mix” of companies at any given point is, and particularly not at a particular City or Town level. The system, bless it, is just way more elaborate, complex and dynamic than that. Just letting it run free is part of the fun. But if anyone does end up with a Google (or Xero) based in their neighbourhood then all power to them. There’s no doubting that can be a very cool thing.
• On a similar vein, I don’t believe that we need to worry too much about whether and to what extent we should focus on building particular areas/sectors of specialisation/picking winners etc. Across the NZVIF portfolio we have an incredible diversity of businesses and if you want to focus on just those that, to date, have given or will likely give rise to the best investment returns then they will have come from a very wide range of industries and sectors. Trust me, they wern’t necessarily obvious successes in their early years either. To my mind, the market does have some natural efficiencies in deciding what types of businesses are built and invested in (witness the current significant weighting in NZ Angel investment (c.50%) towards Software and Services) – but also there is real strength in having as much diversity as we do across our tech/innovation system. Again, I'm a fan of fundamentally letting the system run free in this regard.

Hi, wanted to add an outsider to ChCh's perspective and view. I think given what's happened in ChCh, you've got to be thinking differently than every other EDA out there in NZ, and I think you have the opportunity to.

I sent this to Helen @ CDC earlier and thought it's relevant to this discussion to post here.

I'd be looking at this from a higher level of thinking and say what is the one big compelling difference that you want ChCh to be known for in the next 10 years, rather than the shopping list approach that spreads your resources so thin that if you do most or even 5 of them ok, then no one thing will stand out as having been the most impactful.

Assume you're in the future 10 years already, what will be the biggest thing that would have made a difference (it won't be all the obvious things that you're already doing)?

My personal vision is 1000 serial entrepreneurs created in NZ in the next 10 years, and the subsequent knock on economic benefits in terms of employment, capital, connections, and talent. How can those 1000 mostly come from ChCh? What do you need to be thinking about differently to achieve this - the same old thinking wont create this sort of difference or long-term impact.

In most people I've talked to about ChCh in recent times (esp international ppl), their common view is why isn't ChCh capitalising on disaster tech and new ways of thinking about radical economic redevelopment - that's the clear space for you to be in to push your national and international profile as thought- and action- leading in this space, with tech unpinning every other sector in it.

How do you attract the world's best thinkers and doers about these topics to come do that and innovate from ChCh?

This tech layer cuts across all areas of business and sectors (in fact tech shouldn't really be a sector, more horizontal, since it underpins every other vertical these days) so how could you get new urban planning tech, construction tech, monitoring and measurement tech, people/civil management tech, etc all coming and leading from ChCh. Esp looking at the state the city is still in with significant rebuild progress but significant devastation still apparent. NZ is a great place to be this international beacon given our place in the ring of fire and proximity to so many other devastating events like Tokyo, Nepal, etc.

This is a consistent view I hear from people when I travel to the US - you've got to stand up and be known for one thing to put that in people's minds - whether that's film, or tourism, or milk powder. Tech is such a wide and infrastructural industry these days that no one place can be know for just 'tech'. Silicon Valley is known for consumer software tech. LA is movie tech. New York is Financial tech. What tech is it you want to be known for? Agritech? biotech? Genetics-tech, or is it Disaster tech?

How do you incentivise locals, nationals, and internationals to come do that in ChCh with your support - domain experience, access, can-do and will-do attitude to cut through red tape, financial, mentoring, guidance, etc?

Look at what Startup Chile did to build their entrepreneurial ecosystem from ground up - they offered companies all around the world a 40K equity-free grant to come build their companies in Chile (and be there for at least 6 months), with tax breaks and bunch of other things, but with commitment to give back and educate / mentor the local community as they built their business so they upskilled the local economy to be building for this new domain too. Through this initiative, Chile takes a new international cohort of 300 businesses every 6 months into their programmes and is known on the international stage for the place where startups go before they reach bigger markets like US. They also just announced a bunch of follow on stuff too building on this at government and grassroots level. (The guy who runs that programme is a Kiwi coincidentally, possibly even from ChCh :)

How could you do something visionary like this for ChCh?

The talk of keeping things/people/companies in ChCh is a red herring and an argument I hear too often to justify whether or not EDAs or Govt should be spending money on. The reason why Silicon Valley companies are so successful is that they are surrounded by so many high calibre thinkers that it raises the tide for all: inspiration, collaboration opportunities, better employment opps, connectivity, and scaling ideation of existing efforts.

At this stage of tech ecosystem development (in NZ), it's all about critical mass not captive mass, you get the same benefits by having the quantity and quality of people passing through (for even 6mths to a year) and as a side-effect upskilling the local ecosystem as well as employing them, rather than requiring and stymying innovation by requiring great thinkers or local entrepreneurs to only get support if they stay in ChCh/NZ. (This is an NZ-wide thinking issue in my eyes not just ChCh).

I think competing on those 13/15 tech strategy objectives just keeps you on par with everyone else in NZ and delivers no real compelling reason for me to want to come do my biz in ChCh over Welly or Auckland. Even less so because of the relative risks of future disaster. How can you make me want to come create a business there and innovate there because of the relative risks and association with it?

Hope this helps with some external touchpoints (and strong opinions ;)

I reckon we should be talking to the DIA (specifically Immigration) about smoothing the waters to let technical and marketing experts - especially from places other than the US - spend some time working and playing in Chch (like a sabbatical) with minimal hassles. I think it'll be a great way to achieve cross-pollination and to augment our existing clever minds with some new thinking from other parts of the world. Think those people who visit would also become excellent ambassadors for us in other parts of the world.

Hi Dave/Dan, I've been working on the Open Visa proposal for the last 2 years with Immigration. Just trying to get the Minister across the line on this and then I think we will have the right platform to make this strategy happen.

Great to hear it @rafmanji - let me know if I can provide any assistance :)

Same, let me know if I can help.

Helen, Could we set up a get together at CDC for all those interested in the Open Visa/Talent attraction strategy? I'd be interested to get some feedback as to how we might use 150-300 Open Visas and what sort of people we might like to invite in.

Let me know if that's worth exploring.

Thanks

Raf

Great conversation. As I previously stated, I align with Chris Twiss that a thriving, resilient ecosystem is a diverse one. Winners pick themselves and can't be predicted: at a policy level we shouldn't favour one sector / entrepreneur / business model over another....

...However from a strategic point of view what is missing is HARD DATA. For me, the strategic vision is all about the numbers - simply stated: "Take {well debated but now clearly defined} measurement X from Y in 2015 to Z in 2025." Since in most cases we don't have Y currently, it's hard to talk about anything tangible for the future.

A second point is that the measurements / targets need to be refreshed periodically (every 3 years?) - priorities change rapidly in this space....

One of the outcomes of this consultation needs to be for CDC to take ownership of facilitating the collection and distribution of more granular, accurate longitudinal data relating to the Canterbury Tech Sector. Otherwise everything is qualitative and there's no way to track the success - or otherwise - of strategic initiatives....

The actual measurements I would like to see referencedin the strategic vision (scoped in to the tech sector...) include:

• Total revenues, easily sliceable by at least "subsector" (eg software, manufacturing...precise definitions tba), "company size" (both employee numbers and revenue), "export %" (% of revenue earned overseas), annual growth %.
• Number of company formations (and closures) / year
• Number (and $$$) of tech company investment transactions / year
• Number of company mergers / acquisitions
• Number of people employed (and age group distribution)
• Job roles, staff job changes/year
• Salaries, (by job role)
• Number (and size) of NZ-owned vs. Internationally owned companies
• Long term fate of firms who are acquired by overseas buyers
• Number (and $$$) of inward-investing companies

CDC: How much investment is required to start collecting, anonymising and curating this data - if this isn't available from Statistics NZ, how do we get it?