But what can Yeo teach New Zealand when the Asian economic hub, with all the brilliance of its well-educated power elite, has failed to recapture its stunning pre-crisis growth levels?
Will the international political, business and educational leaders and those behind the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference capture minds and inspire a commitment to lift New Zealand's overall economic performance, or will they be buried in an avalanche of news media negativity in the same way Team New Zealand's Sir Peter Blake was last year pilloried and torn from his perch?
New Zealand faces many challenges as it seeks high sustained growth rates to spur it back into the top half of OECD countries - a goal Prime Minister Helen Clark has placed at the forefront of her Government's agenda. To do that it will need to register average annual growth rates of 6-7 per cent, as National's Jenny Shipley outlined at her party's annual conference, to general media derision.
The two ambitions are simply sides of the same coin. As Treasury points out, that level of annualised growth is essential if New Zealand is to move into the top half of the OECD.
In Singapore's case, the magnitude of its economic downturn will ensure Yeo faces some penetrating questions. Last year's preliminary estimates put the 2001 official growth forecast at 5 to 7 per cent, but the forecasts have since been reduced to 3.5-5.5 per cent in April, then shaved down to just 0.5-1.5 per cent last month as regional and global economies slowed and the world electronic industry went into its worst downturn since the advent of the personal computer.
A familiar player in schmooze-filled halls, from the World Economic Forum's Davos meetings to the World Trade Organisation, Yeo's Auckland presentation will be to a somewhat lesser wattage. But while it may not be the haute monde, both the Prime Minister and the Opposition leader are fielding their senior political teams, central banker Don Brash will be there, as will bureaucratic luminaries from Treasury, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development, Industry New Zealand, Trade New Zealand and the social policy ministries, rubbing shoulders with the 30 international and local business, political and educational leaders who number among them a Nobel Prize winner, humanitarians, visionaries, scientists and educationalists.
At a meeting in Singapore last year, Yeo spoke convincingly of the diversification strategy the Singapore Government had employed to cauterise damage from the Asian crisis.
Ambassador Tommy Koh had been dispatched to Europe to build links with Asia as Singapore sought to reduce its own exposure to its troubled neighbours and re-engineer its international competitiveness.
A talent scout was launched to attract back well-educated Singaporeans who were working in the United States, and a top cadre of teachers were sent offshore to lift their skills.
Singapore's crucial positioning as a giant transport and finance hub for Asia was leveraged with major investments in petro-chemicals, the development of Changi Airport, widely regarded as the world's best, and the expansion of international investment and trading links, including a closer economic partnership agreement with New Zealand.
Singapore's expansionary policies have met with pockets of resistance, particularly in Australia, where there has been a huge xenophobic reaction to Singtel's planned acquisition of a controlling stake in C&W Optus and the looming presence of Singapore Airlines as a competitor for Qantas.
But Yeo will get together with Helen Clark for a private meeting on Friday morning amid indications that Singapore is keen to expand the bilateral trade and investment agreement to third parties. Singaporean support for New Zealand's own bid for a free trade agreement with the US is also expected to be canvassed, along with Singapore Airlines' plans for Air New Zealand.
Yeo's warning that the entry of China into the WTO would put pressure on wages all over the world, particularly the lower end, will resonate with New Zealand as much as Singapore. "Whether we like it or not, we are competing with hundreds of millions of eager and hungry Chinese and Indians for the low-end jobs," he told Singaporeans last week, urging them to accept that the new economy was for real and that they must make use of information technology and e-commerce.
His package focuses on investing $S716 million in infrastructure projects and delaying the restoration of the full employer's contribution to the Central Provident Fund (providing an estimated $S920 million fillip for employers) and other measures such as property tax rebates for the commercial sector and rental rebates for state-owned industrial property.
Yeo, previously Information and Arts Minister, has fretted that the internet is demolishing old hierarchical structures and undermining Asian values in the process.
"Like fire, the internet is a force for good and evil," he said.
"But like the dancing flame, it is also devilishly hard to resist."
Providing the counterpoint to Yeo's address is Sally Shelton-Colby, deputy secretary-general of the OECD, who will examine New Zealand's comparative economic advantage, and Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash, whose ability to speak his mind and give a truly frank perspective is inevitably politically constrained despite his statutory independence.
The politically astute Brash will use the well-tried out of raising questions rather than advocating a broad sweep of changes. But his support for any broad programme of transformational change policies is essential, particularly in managing the tradeoffs between growth policies and his requirement to keep inflation under control.
The notion of a constructive crisis has provided plenty of pre-conference controversy as critics debate the appropriateness of the creation of a burning platform to provoke transformational change.
At issue is whether a sense of impending doom will be hyped up to manufacture a desire for change, or whether a rigorous, objective analysis of New Zealand's economic and social outlook would spark the obvious deduction that if major change does not take place the country's relative wealth will continue to slide.
Why wait till the country is in the gutter before going through the drying out period? asks a Steering Group member.
Many leaders present such as Taiwan's Dr Yaun T. Lee, Israel's Gurion Meltzer and Ireland's Sean Dorgan, come from countries that had no need to build a constructive crisis to force change. They were already faced with substantial economic difficulties which made major change policies inevitable.
Taiwan's Lee, credited as a king-maker in his country's national politics, has been instrumental in the creation of Academia Sinica, which runs a network of 25 research institutes. Taiwan's emphasis on research and development (in 1997, Taiwan spent 1.9 per cent of GDP to New Zealand's 0.98 per cent) has been cited as helping arrest the scientific brain drain.
Lee's own part in helping end 55 years of government by the Kuomintang party, and his anti-corruption focus, put him at the forefront of Taiwanese national life. But his antithetical views on education - unlike many Asians he favours systems which foster non-conformity - put him alongside other creative thinkers at the conference such as lateral thinker Edward de Bono, rather, than traditional Asian educationalists.
Israel's story is less prosaic. Like Ireland, it experienced rapid GDP growth for much of the 1990s. The political stability built through the Middle East peace process reduced risk but it is still a powder keg.
Gurion Meltzer, the former chairman of Israel's main telco Bezeq, has been active as chair of the Israel-Australia, New Zealand and Oceania Chamber of Commerce in forging relationships between Israeli venture capital funds and New Zealand policy-makers.
The grandfather of Israel's huge venture capital industry, Yigal Erlich, advised cabinet minister Pete Hodgson on the development of the Crown Seed Capital Fund.
A swag of New Zealanders such as the Auckland Chamber of Commerce's Michael Barnett, property developer Andrew Krukziener and Auckland University's Bridget Wickham have toured Israel, studying business incubators and how to harness new ideas.
The strength of purpose that Israel showed as it turned desert land into agricultural abundance, all the time surrounded by enemies, has been illustrated also by the oft-told Irish Story. As chief executive of the Industrial Development Agency, Sean Dorgan presides over the switch away from an over-reliance on round-one investment policies such as low taxes, which Ireland used to persuade multinationals to re-site their operations, to placing more emphasis on the development of regional economies.
But Ireland's escalating wages and salaries, sky-high property prices and under-investment in infrastructure, such as transport and telecommunications, have got to the point where nations such as New Zealand are now far better placed to compete for investment.
Just how Ireland retains its competitive advantage now that it is a wealthy nation will be a key question Dorgan will have to address. Christchurch software entrepreneur Sir Gil Simpson only half jokes when he suggests that New Zealand should directly target some of the US transnationals which are now subject to rising costs within Ireland.
Many of the usual suspects have been arrayed, such as Harvard's Professor Michael Porter and De Bono. But as a study which revisits the 1990 Porter Project shows (the project advocated the establishment of critical industry clusters to take advantage of the global market), New Zealand has not been particularly adept at carrying forward its suggestions.
In Global Player? Benchmarking New Zealand's Competitive Upgrade, a recently-published research monograph which reviews the Porter influence, John Yeabsley of the Institute of Economic Research points out that New Zealand is still not consistently producing the economic results that citizens demand.
Management had improved, Yeabsley found, but there were relatively few leaders, domestically-based businesses still seemed to be mainly commodity producers and traders, multinational companies engaged in manufacturing did not tend to locate processing in New Zealand, and a cost-cutting focus had put a strain on human resources to the point where operational problems that might undermine the viability of whole businesses had emerged.
Among other findings: job creation had tended to be in low-skilled work, overseas debt had increased and productivity improvement had been poor.
While a pattern had emerged of quick-growing firms driven by key entrepreneurs moving rapidly to significant scale by competing well on international markets, they then failed to go to the next stage and become large world-scale leadership businesses. As in Australia, the branch office effect was an issue, as critical intellectual resources were moved to overseas locations.
De Bono's "Six Hats" approach to creative problem solving is well-known to a generation of New Zealand managers. Less well-known is the fact that schools in Singapore, the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland use De Bono's programmes to teach thinking.
Other major players include: Lord Robert Winston, the UK fertility specialist whose acerbic interview with National Radio's Kim Hill stunned listeners; former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, now a visiting professor in public policy at the University of New South Wales; Deutsche Bank chief economist Norbert Walter; New Zealand-born political economy professor Robert Wade, who now teaches at the London School of Economics, the hot-bed of the Third Way policies which left-wing politicians from Britain's Tony Blair, to Germany's Gerhard Schroeder to Helen Clark all adhere to, to varying degrees; and Dr Jilly Evans, Kiwi-born director of pharmacology at Merck Research Laboratories in the US.
Taking in all of this will be Rick Christie, the chairman of the Prime Minister's Science and Innovation Advisory Council (Siac). It will be Christie's job to ensure that Siac's draft innovation strategy - due to be fed into the conference discussions - quickly gains some legs. There have been a plethora of reports - from Ralph Norris' Knowledge Economy project, which was lead-written by Unitec's Howard Frederick - through to National's Bright Future strategy - but a coherent rollout of implementation plans and action agendas has yet to occur.
Comparisons between New Zealand and Australia show a wide gap.
In New Zealand, 11 per cent of those aged from 25 to 64 have tertiary qualifications; in Australia the comparable figure is 15 per cent. Both countries are dwarfed by the US, where 26 per cent of those aged 15-64 have similar qualifications.
Australia's chief scientist Robin Batterham, who presided over that country's Innovation Strategy, will tomorrow share a platform with Lee on 'Innovation and Learning Transformation'. Australia is committed to spending $A2.9 billion over five years on things such as increasing research funding and reforming R&D tax concessions.
That level of ambition has not yet emerged in New Zealand, but if this country is to sustain the high growth rates necessary to rejoin the top half of the OECD it will need to better its competitors.
Other leaders include: John Seely Brown, chief scientist at Xerox Corporation, McKinsey's Dick Foster, a proponent of creative destruction theories, Berkeley's David Teece, the UN's Nitin Desai, Pacific Foundation head Lesley Max, who has been instrumental in ensuring the social policy component is addressed, US economist Woody Brock, Professor Shih Choon Fong, who is vice-chancellor of Singapore's National University, Israel's Professor Nehemia Levtzion, Korean publisher Dae Whan Chang, Judge Mick Brown, Auckland Medical School Dean Peter Gluckman, Harvard Law School's Rob Prichard. Jorma Routti from the Helsinki Technological University and New Zealand Herald columnnist and commentator Colin James, who will chair Friday's final session.
Session Chairs:
Andrew Grant - McKinsey
Challenge: To keep his session on Economically Sustainable policies from becoming too PC. The National Scorecard is a brainy idea but might be a tad too challenging for the politicians. Grant will need some high-energy and determined players in his workshop to ensure bold aspirations evolve.
Contribution: Grant has been in the thick of the Knowledge Wave project since he came back to New Zealand from Sydney nearly two years ago. His catchy slogans to describe old economy players such as Dancing with Dinosaurs are well-known to many in the business community who have heard his analyses.
Chris Liddell - Carter Holt
Challenge: To make sure his Entrepreneurship session does not get bogged down in self-congratulatory cliches on the number eight wire approach to innovation. The 2001 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) indicates only 35 per cent of small New Zealand businesses survive what are the lessons.
Contribution: Liddell has gone big on entrepreneurship at Carter Holt Harvey. The Six Fingered Hand model of entrepreneurial values has b een branded: On this model an entrepreneur must display Chameleon qualities, have True Grit, be into Extreme Sport, see the glass as Half Full, get others to Follow Me and show Hunger if he/she is to succeed.
Anne Salmond - University of Auckland
Challenge: Social Cohesion is a difficult enough subject at the best of times, but three days gives plenty of time for conflicts to emerge particularly given the wide views present in the diverse audience. Drawing up action plans which are seen to bridge the Knowledge Divide is one of the thorniest issues.
Contribution: Salmond was thinking about the nature of New Zealand society in particular the nature of the relationship between Maori and Pakeha and the strains from that, years back. Her writings have been internationally acclaimed.
Bridget Wickham- University of Auckland
Challenge: The other half of the Liddell/Wickham power duo has been here before when she challenged New Zealanders to develop a more innovative and creative culture. But the National Innovation System in New Zealand is less than ideal Wickhams workshop has to knit the culture together.
Contribution: Wickham successfully launched The Great New Zealand Business Venture a programme which enticed players to enter a business planning competition using a raft of mentors; she has also been on Competititive Aucklands board and is on the board of Industry New Zealand.
Bryan Gould - University of Waikato
Challenge: The task of Goulds People and Capabilities workshop is to examine how New Zealands expansion into a knowledge-based society is underpinned by a focus on increased achievement levels at a time when education funding for universities has been clamped.
Contribution: A former labour politician in the UK, Gould came back to New Zealand after years on the Opposition benches. Well-aligned with New Zealand Labours academics-turned-politicians like Helen Clark and Attorney-General Margaret Wilson, Gould has taken a relatively low profile to date.
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