<i>Dialogue:</i> If only they'd set our scientists free

14 Feb, 2002 07:12 PM5 mins to read

If we are serious about innovation, we must liberate talented young scientists from a stifling managerial system, writes DICK WILKINS*.

The Prime Minister has finally released her plan for "Growing an innovative New Zealand", but my guess is that few people are going to have the patience to wade through the several hundred pages of accompanying documentation.

This is not to say it isn't all good stuff. In 20 different ways, with 20 different forms of kilobyte-gobbling graphics, we are told why New Zealand is the way it is.

But you look in vain through all the reports for some real practical, pragmatic, implementable recommendations. There are none.

The usual stuff about creating global registers of expatriates, rehabilitating bankrupt entrepreneurs and so on is trotted out, but really it is time all this stuff was locked away in the filing cabinet and we all moved on to doing something.

Why is it we all seem able to accept the page after page of evidence in the reports tabled by the Prime Minister that show how badly New Zealand is doing, yet we seem unable to accept that it is time we broke a few eggs?

Take just one area that the Prime Minister focuses on - biotechnology. There is a consensus that biotechnology has a lot of promise for New Zealand. No doubt it does, but the same is true for all developed countries.

There does, however, seem to be a widespread misconception here that, because we are an agricultural country, we have some kind of natural advantage when it comes to developing biotechnological industries. We have little such advantage. Countries such as Singapore are more than able to compete with us.

The most lucrative areas of biotechnology are in the life sciences, and the medical sciences in particular. When we compete in these areas, we compete with the world and it requires top-class scientists and top-class science.

It is no accident that most of the 20 or so biotechnology start-up companies operating in New Zealand concentrate on the life sciences, and they involve top-class scientists who have established international-level scientific careers before embarking on these ventures. Interestingly, many of these companies involve personnel from either the Otago or Auckland medical schools.

Of course, long term some of these companies will succeed and some will not. The chance of getting one that succeeds on anything like the scale of Nokia is much less than one in 100.

The dilemma for governments, administrators and committees is that history has shown again and again that it is not possible to pick the one winner. After all, who would have picked a lumber company in Finland as the future number one mobile phone manufacturer in the world?

The only guarantee of success is to ensure that there are hundreds of biotechnology start-up companies in New Zealand.

As William Rolleston commented in regard to university-derived biotechnology companies a few weeks ago: "They are a good start - we need about 150."

What is the limiting factor in expanding the number of biotech companies tenfold? A lot has been said about the difficulty of raising venture capital, but the real limitation is finding sufficient well-trained scientists who have developed their own research careers to an international level and who are prepared in move into the commercial arena.

We urgently need hundreds of such scientists trained in the life sciences. Nothing in the various Government reports addresses this issue.

Although a few more scientists may be induced to move from academia into commerce, by far the greatest potential source is in the crown research institutes.

However, here there is a serious problem. As alluded to in the reports released by the Prime Minister, crown research institutes have serious problems in attracting, developing, and retaining talented researchers.

Digging a little deeper into Foundation for Research Science and Technology documents, it appears that younger scientists find it difficult to achieve positions of responsibility in the crown research institutes.

Older staff impede their advancement, science is packaged and repackaged into increasingly large programmes by non-scientist managers with little input from active scientists, and scientific assessment falls well short of internationally accepted standards of peer review.

Put in simpler terms, we have a large pool of talented younger scientists in the crown research institutes who are prevented from developing the very abilities we desperately need by an overly bureaucratic managerial system.

What is most depressing about all of this is that we tie up a large percentage of our research money in propagating such an archaic system.

We could change this system overnight if the Government insisted that we moved to the internationally accepted system of career development for scientists - that is, application for research funds for their own projects, peer review of their science to ensure it is of international class, and ownership of their research careers.

Perhaps it is time to throw away all the higher-level planning guff, liberate our younger scientists, give them the chance to develop their own research careers, and subscribe to the expectation that from thousands of high-achieving scientists will come hundreds of start-up companies and one or two Nokias.

Radical though this may seem, the funny thing is that a lot of the countries higher up than us in the OECD ratings have been financing science in this way for 50 years or more. Perhaps they realise that good science leads to good business, not vice versa.

* Dick Wilkins lectures in the department of biological sciences at the University of Waikato.

Read the full reports on the Government's innovation strategy:

Government of New Zealand

Growing an innovative New Zealand

Part 2

Herald features

Catching the knowledge wave