Leaders from all sectors pool ideas

By ANDREW GRANT*

As Team New Zealand battles for the America's Cup on the water, another team of New Zealanders will be taking on a very different and far-reaching challenge.

For the 450 delegates at Knowledge Wave 2003 - the Leadership Forum, the question is not the future of the cup, but the future of New Zealand and how we can get more wind in our economic sails, creating the healthy, strong communities we all want.

Applying their minds to this question will be the most diverse group of New Zealanders gathered in one venue - artists, actors and academics, farmers and fashion designers, small-business owners and corporate leaders, central and local government officers and politicians, community leaders, new New Zealanders and fourth-generation Kiwis. They are coming together from all regions of New Zealand and from all points of view.

They include 350 established leaders in their given fields and 100 New Zealanders, many in the 20 to 35 age group, who have all been identified as emerging leaders. Of these, 50 have been chosen by the Knowledge Wave Trust, the host and organiser of the forum, and 50 through a nationwide search involving 20 newspapers from Northland to Southland.

From Wednesday to Friday, these delegates will focus on the interdependent themes of growth, knowledge and community.

Growth is on the agenda because we need more of it. The Government's stated goal is to get New Zealand back up in the top half of the OECD, but annual growth of 4 to 6 per cent is required for the next 10 years to achieve this. We are well short of the mark, with every indicator pointing to only 2 to 2.5 per cent this year.

Unlike the America's Cup challenge, getting back into the top half of the OECD's performance tables is not a question of simply showing the world who is the best performer. It's a question of ensuring New Zealanders continue to have the opportunities and choices - economic, social and environmental - that we need to maintain and raise our living standards.

What can one forum possibly do to propel New Zealand forward? It's a good question and one with a solid answer in the Catching the Knowledge Wave conference of August 2001. From it came the recognition that most of the world's best-performing countries owed their economic performance to having well-educated people generating and applying knowledge.

The term "knowledge wave" slipped into the national lexicon and we then began to see these concepts influence the country's direction.

The conference did more than nudge our political leaders down a growth path. It generated a realisation among private and corporate citizens that we must all take responsibility for national affairs. The enthusiasm with which this idea was embraced is shown by the fact it led to more than 60 initiatives, all driven by private or corporate citizens, to lift our economic and social performance.

What is different about this second conference, with its emphasis on leadership? From the first event came a call for more opportunities to look collectively, critically and creatively at the issues facing New Zealand.

We lack forums where New Zealanders from all sectors, age groups and geographies can meet on an equal footing. Yet we need the networks to lead change that these types of events create by connecting people whose paths might never otherwise cross.

Knowledge Wave 2003 - the Leadership Forum responds to that call in the broadest possible way as the diverse range of delegates attests. It is also responding by adding to the mix a group of international and national speakers whose ideas will almost certainly spark innovative answers to national issues and move the national agenda forward again.

United States Professor Richard Florida's theory, for example, that the most economically thriving cities are those that attract creative people, already has civic leaders thinking about how to lure scientists, engineers, film-makers, musicians, fashion designers, software developers and architects to town.

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam will demonstrate how his US-based research conclusively shows that the key to healthy communities are high levels of civic engagement, and that direct involvement and action by locals in local social and community organisations has a major bearing on how successfully societies tackle problems of education, urban poverty, crime and drug abuse, unemployment and public health.

Bjorn Stigson, the president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, will provide timely insights into how we can stay clean and green and internationally competitive.

Dr Vinton Cerf, an internet pioneer, will open our eyes to the burgeoning social, economic, educational, creative and communications potential this technology has for a country like ours, with its distance from the rest of the world and our far-flung rural population.

Professor Paul Romer, a professor of economics at Stanford University and lead developer of the new growth theory, will share his thoughts on how ideas and knowledge drive economic growth as much today as labour, resources and factories did in the Industrial Revolution.

The cynics might say those three days, three main topics and 450 people sound more like a recipe for hot air than hot ideas. But, as Kiwi songwriter Neil Finn says in his song Distant Sun, " ... tell me all the things you would change. I don't pretend to know what you want."

It's discussion and debate, and plenty of it, among a diverse group that challenges thinking, generates ideas, promotes understanding, breaks down prejudices, exposes people to different views, gets wants and needs out in the open, provokes action and generates support for the actions we need to take.

At Knowledge Wave 2003, we will hear a national conversation quite unlike anything we have heard before. The diversity of those attending - and their equal footing - guarantees that, and all this discussion will be public.

The forum will be broadcast live on Sky's digital service (channel 58) from Wednesday to Friday, and New Zealand subscribers, wherever they are, can contribute to the conference discussions by email.

Where this national conversation will lead is an exciting unknown, but if experience is an indicator, it will continue long after the event ends through the strong leadership networks the forum aims to create.

The first Knowledge Wave helped to change our economic course and create greater inclusivity. The second wave could propel us even further forward as a nation.

* Andrew Grant, the New Zealand director of McKinsey and Co, is an executive board member of the Knowledge Wave Trust.

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