Innovation New Zealand

Innovation of a nation tends to have a strong correlation with economic and social success. This tends to be reflected both when comparing to a trend of a nation's performance as well as an indicator of its performance on a global stage. Reputable research organisations, either as consortiums or or stand alone authorities have over the years published rankings (or indexes) of innovation. Measurements of innovation is a hotly contested area with various metrics and quantifiable elements forming an ongoing debate amongst academics and industry pundits. Regardless of the 'fluidity' of definition and research method, from the work carried out in conducting and building these rankings and from the material presented in the accompanying reports it does become painstakingly clear that the measure of innovation is an important attribute of a nation's success.

New Zealand features on several of these global studies. Often quite successfully ranking ourselves against comparable and at times other highly performing nations. A detailed look inward at the differently structured industries and quite often unique attributes of our No.8 Wire approach in working within these industries has however been something that to date has not garnered much study.

IBM New Zealand, as a locally driven initiative, first embarked on formulating and building a New Zealand Innovation Index some years back. The results were interesting to say the least. Whilst we pride ourselves on a strong innovation culture, the study seemed to indicate that this measure didn't quite stack up to our own perceived notions.

This year's Innovation Index (http://www-07.ibm.com/innovation/nz/) took our methods and lessons of study from the previous year more in an exploratory direction. The publicly available static report lays out our findings clearly and in a manner that is easily digestible. The Innovation Index website, presents a dynamically interactive platform in which to explore the various data sets. This approach to presenting our findings has generated a rigorous conversation and commentary around New Zealand innovation that was not as prevalent in previous years.

I believe that in studies of this nature a continuous improvement in definition and method is important to a cohesive and in context view; but paramount to this is the importance of debate and discussion on the subject itself. Have a read and exploration of our findings and highlight the viewpoints that are important from your perspective.

Edit: IBM has posted a summarised version of this post on their Business Insight blog http://ibm.co/19TkXRX