DANIEL RIORDAN talks to a Christchurch entrepreneur with a vision for New Zealand as the Silicon Valley of world education.
Dennis Chapman doesn't mince words. Ask him how New Zealand is doing and his response is as bleak as a Christchurch winter.
"We're in trouble - we've gone down the gurgler in a big way."
Vision from the top? Forget it.
"Since Roger Douglas we've had no leadership, we've just meandered into the wide blue yonder ... too many bureaucrats busy redistributing wealth without creating it."
One of the leading lights of Christchurch's thriving electronics manufacturing industry, this Ferrari-driving jandal-wearer is spending big chunks of the millions he made as a high-tech entrepreneur trying to set things right, starting at ground zero - education.
Mr Chapman, aged 46, is adamant New Zealand can become the Silicon Valley of world education, and to help prove it he is giving money to more than a dozen Christchurch high-tech start-ups - about half of them developing leading-edge education products.
He has also ploughed about $5 million of his own money over the past five years into computer resources and staff at the two local state schools attended by his four children, as well as promoting greater use of technology in schools around the country.
Twelve months ago, Ernst & Young named him its Master Entrepreneur of the Year, recognising his dedication to fostering entrepreneurial spirit.
Mr Chapman is a director of Industrial Research, one of the country's biggest crown research institutes, sits on the board of venture capital firm No. 8 Ventures, and was a prime mover behind NZ Inc, the high-tech ginger group trying to ensure the Government succeeds in supporting the knowledge economy.
Five of his education start-ups operate from a building that used to house that old-economy icon Lane Walker Rudkin, a few kilometres south of the city centre.
Working from the one site enables them to help each other with mentoring advice and brainstorming, as well as sharing free administrative services provided by Mr Chapman's management company.
As each project grows, it will move out of the incubator.
Mr Chapman came out of his own de facto incubator, starting his working life - like so many of Christchurch's high-tech entrepreneurs - at Tait Electronics.
The son of a clerical worker with the Government Stores Board, he topped his apprenticeship with a degree in electrical engineering from Canterbury University and left Tait to co-found Switchtec Power Systems, which supplies telecommunications companies worldwide and grew to become the country's second-biggest electronics exporter, behind Tait.
When he and his partners sold the company to British conglomerate BRT for $74 million in 1998 it employed about 450 staff.
Switchtec began in a garage as a bright idea using high technology, which is exactly the model Mr Chapman is keen to see emulated elsewhere, provided our education system embraces technology and changes its ways.
He is adamant that New Zealand can lead the education world despite the obstacles.
"Every turn you take there are hurdles in the way. I've spent five years trying to get R&D money for schools, developing learning materials and equipment so they could be more effective. But because what I'm proposing doesn't fit any of the pegs the Government has, nothing happens."
Making technology and science sexy isn't easy.
"The education system on the whole is not appropriate for our future. It was set up on three premises: learning is something you do at the beginning of your life, knowledge and information changes little from generation to generation, and the teacher is the oracle of all knowledge. None of those are valid any more, but the Government doesn't understand that."
He believes the problem is not with what is taught, but rather the way in which the system measures students' success, at every stage below doctorate level.
"What the system measures is the ability to regurgitate stored information, but what commerce and industry want are people with a whole set of skills. Learning on the job, working as a team member, being able to communicate - none of that gets measured."
The problems extend to Government funding of research in crown research institutions and universities, in ways that are inadequate for the needs of business.
That not only makes it difficult for business to find the people it needs, but also contributes to the brain drain.
"Lecturers have pet things they want to work on. They encourage all these bright students to get into them and then they come out with PhDs and they race into industry and say, 'We want to work in New Zealand because we love the place, and by the way, I'm a rocket scientist.'
"And we say, 'We don't have rocket science in New Zealand so sorry, you've actually got to go and do something else.'
"And they say, 'But I've spent five bloody years of my life training to be a rocket scientist and now you're telling me there's no position in New Zealand that uses that specific skill?'
"And the answer's yes. We'll use your generic skills - the ability to think and stuff like that - but you've honed those for so many years in a specific area that you've got to start again and retrain, or go overseas.
"And a lot do. Throw in the noose around their necks of student loans and it's no bloody wonder."
His solutions include PhD scholarships with industry sponsors and tax concessions for businesses which give some of their profits to universities for R&D, as happens in the United States.
He is also critical of crown research institutes, which he sees as being too focused on primary sector-based research, a failing exacerbated by the ease with which existing recipients capture fresh funds.
And there is a problem reflected in the Government's misguided attempts to boost the so-called knowledge economy.
"Jim Anderton talks about the knowledge economy as applying today's technology to the farming and forestry sectors to make better commodities, but that's not what it's about at all.
"Instead it's about growing businesses where 50 to 100 per cent of the sale price comes from intellectual capital."
The vast majority of those businesses will be in electronics, software and biotechnology. And the beauty of the first two, beams Mr Chapman, is they generate employment for people with a wide range of intellectual prowess - from the very bright people doing the research to the average Joe Blow on the production floor.
Businesses with a place for jandals - not that footwear means anything in a Dennis Chapman company.
Dennis Chapman's education start-ups:
*ELECTEC COLLEGE, which trains technicians and assemblers for local electronics and electrical industries.
*BRAINWAYS, which markets interactive classroom teaching aids.
*HEURISKO, developing education and commercial websites, and the recent winner of Computerworld's award for excellence in the use of IT in education.
*BRYLTON, which provides software textbooks (based outside the incubator).
*ELECTROFLASH, making science kits.
*THINCNZ, a hardware company making networked computer systems for schools.
The Juice
*New Zealand failed to embrace the knowledge economy.
*It's not too late, but fundamental changes need to be made, and made quickly.
*Reforming our education system is the first, and most important, step.
*Our electronics and software sectors have huge earnings and employment potential.
<i>The next wave</i>: Big spender on knowledge economy
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