For BusinessNZ CEO Phil O'Reilly, New Zealand's economic prospects are looking positive - but a sustained shortage of top-tier talent is jeopardising our chances of long-term prosperity.
"We really need to up our game as business leaders about the way in which we think about global talent - attracting it, retaining it and then utilising it when it knocks on our door," he said.
"What we are finding is increasingly the case is that talent is borderless.
"We are finding that if you want really good company leaders, if you want those key people inside business - and I'm not talking about people here who do good work, but there are lots of them - I'm thinking about the world-class CFO, the ICT visionary - they're global people."