By SIMON COLLINS
Up to 200 expatriate New Zealanders may be invited home for another big conference to follow up this week's Knowledge Wave event.
Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday welcomed a suggestion by expatriate scientist Dr Jilly Evans that between 100 and 200 New Zealanders living overseas should be invited to form a kind of "reverse trade delegation" to their homeland.
"I thought it was a great idea," Helen Clark said.
Dr Evans, director of pharmacology at Merck Research Laboratories in the United States, told the Knowledge Wave conference that New Zealand needed to find ways to bring back expatriates and "reincorporate them into the fabric of the NZ society".
She suggested a Beehive banquet hall hangi, seminars and social events.
"Give them a platform to contribute to this nation's prosperity with their unique experiences gained overseas. Like a reverse brain drain," she said.
In a speech highlighted by a tribute to her former teacher Neil Akehurst, who was in the audience, Dr Evans called on business to contribute towards educating its future workers.
"To those business people, hospital and education directors I pose the question: What are you doing to ensure the future supply of top talent in New Zealand?" she asked.
"Industries can sponsor school trips to factories and research labs, industry employees can give talks and demonstrations at schools, industrial managers can get involved with school curriculums so that the skills needed in real life jobs are being taught.
"A lot of the curriculums at university have no reality to those that are out there [in industry].
"We need to have more interaction between business and the education system. Invest time and money in the education of the future workforce."
An expatriate working for management consultants McKinsey & Co in New York, Ian Narev, said the internet and the coming of fast broadband communications gave New Zealand the opportunity to "scale up" its business ideas to the world stage despite our isolation.
"Thanks to the knowledge wave, specialist knowledge is picked up and delivered effortlessly throughout the world. The best ideas can have global impact," he said.
"This creates a real opportunity to keep talented New Zealanders here and bring others from all over the globe to New Zealand ...
"If we get it right, we can all ride the knowledge wave to greater prosperity, as good old Kiwi ingenuity is reinvented as pockets of world-class specialisation."
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