Expert help a mouse click away

By SIMON COLLINS

Kiwi innovators will soon have an online link to experts around the world who can help turn their ideas into commercial success.

The Kiwilink project, coordinated by Waikato University doctoral student Annick Janson, is the latest spinoff from the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference in Auckland in August.

It aims to create online discussion groups for products, industries, regions and iwi where innovators can seek advice from expert researchers, manufacturers, marketers and others with knowledge of specific fields.

"The idea is innovators getting the amount of advice they need, but only in the areas that are needed," Ms Janson said yesterday.

"For example, someone who has a product might be thinking, 'I would like to find a manufacturer somewhere in New Zealand or in the East that would manufacture it.'

"The collective knowledge can emerge in a virtual group, so if I don't know it, I might know the person who would know it."

The Knowledge Wave conference recommended more collaboration between New Zealand businesses and researchers and more use of the 600,000 Kiwis living overseas - many of them in key positions.

Ms Janson, a French-born researcher who has worked for universities in Israel and the United States, attended the conference and was inspired to start Kiwilink after hearing entrepreneur Stephen Tindall.

"There was a lot of positive charge at the end of the conference. Now we have to follow up with results," she said.

She applied to Industry NZ for funds under the Government's policy of supporting business incubators, but was told the policy was not for "virtual" incubators.

However, she has obtained seed money from Vodafone and Waikato University and is putting together a core group of up to 20 people, including innovators, marketers, academics and software experts.

She is looking for people who have both passion for the project and time to put into it - which rules out many chief executives. "Stephen Tindall is passionate, but he has no time whatever."

She hopes the core group will then select three pilot projects - probably a region, an industry and a product - to test procedures before opening the project to all-comers.

Each online discussion group will need a moderator who will monitor contributions and ask questions when required to take the group in more constructive directions.

Ms Janson hopes that eventually this role may be financed by a business group or an agency such as Trade NZ, but initially it will be voluntary.

* e-mail: annick@waikato.ac.nz