The SME Stream

New Zealand wants more from its science system – more startups, more export revenue and more high-paying jobs. But in the rush to commercialise research, are we putting the discoveries that fuel future breakthroughs at risk?
That tension sits at the heart of the latest episode of The Business of Tech, featuring Professor Frank Bloomfield, the University of Auckland’s deputy vice-chancellor of research and innovation.
With around 39,000 full-time equivalent students supported and generating $1.63 billion in revenue last year, the university is New Zealand’s largest and a formidable concentration of researchers, specialist facilities and emerging talent.
Bloomfield, a respected neonatologist, researcher, and former director of the Liggin’s Institute, argues that its role extends far beyond teaching students and publishing academic papers. A modern university should also be a talent engine, an innovation partner and an active contributor to the economy around it.
From basic research to world-beating product
Auckland has already produced innovation success stories. Wireless charging pioneer PowerbyProxi is a prime example, emerging from university research with the help of the university’s commercialisation arm, Uniservices, before being acquired by Apple. The challenge is to repeat that feat in areas where New Zealand has genuine capability, including medtech, space, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and clean energy.
Bloomfield says there is no single switch that turns an academic discovery into a successful company. Intellectual-property rules matter, but so do entrepreneurial skills, early-stage funding, access to laboratories, industry relationships and support from people who know how to take an idea to market.
The university is trying to assemble that full pipeline through its Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, commercialisation company UniServices and a $40 million evergreen Inventors Fund. Its Newmarket Innovation Precinct is also bringing researchers and companies together physically, with about 38 businesses and 140 people based there at the time of the interview.
Scale, talent, and connections
But significant gaps remain. Auckland, and New Zealand in general, is still short of the scale-up capital needed to turn promising ventures into global companies. Universities, business, councils and central government are not always pulling in the same direction. Academic career incentives can also favour papers and teaching over building products or spinning out companies.
Bloomfield wants stronger innovation precincts, smarter immigration settings and incentives that help attract talent and keep ambitious companies here.
His strongest warning, however, is against pursuing quick commercial wins at the expense of fundamental science. The technologies being commercialised today often rest on blue-skies research conducted years or even decades ago.
Stop funding that exploratory work, Bloomfield says, and New Zealand risks draining the pipeline on which its future innovators will depend.
Listen to the full conversation on The Business of Tech, streaming on iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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New Zealand’s housing market has taken another step backwards.
Property values have now fallen for six months in a row, with the national median value dropping below the previous cycle low.
And while buyers have more choice and bargaining power, there’s still little sign of a sharp rebound - with high mortgage rates, economic uncertainty and plenty of houses on the market keeping a lid on prices.
So, what’s happening in the housing market, and how much longer could this subdued period last?
Today on The Front Page, Cotality NZ chief property economist Kelvin Davidson is with us to break it all down.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
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Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds says they won't change modelling, despite the pre-election fiscal update showing smaller house price growth.
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How big is his hole? Nicola Willis was asking Grant Robertson back in 2023, where are you going to find the money to fill that Government's financial fiscal hole? And now yesterday, she says that Labour has another fiscal hole to fill and it's a beauty. She told us yesterday when she was a guest in studio that there is no way Labour can afford to fund their pay equity promises, far less many of the other promises they're making to voters. Labour in response has said, well just taihoa, all will be revealed when our fiscal plan is produced sometime soon.
Now some of this is electioneering and there's a surprise given we're in the middle of an election campaign. For example, National says that Labour's promise to fund public transport for many parts of the country, up to a certain point, will come out of the Crown balance sheet. Labour says absolutely not, they'll take the money from the Land Transport Fund. They won't pay for something that's been promised out of the Land Transport Fund. They won't pay for that, they'll pay for their public transport fares. It's called reprioritisation – the money does exist for the public transport fares, they just won't pay for something else. Some of the funding though is a mystery. I have no idea where they think they're going to get 11, 13, 14 and counting billion dollars for pay equity. Chris Hipkins, opposition leader, is adamant the money can be found within the budget as he told Mike Hosking yesterday.
CH: We're going to set out in our plan, you know, we're going to demonstrate in our fiscal plan, you know, when we set out our breakdown of numbers that we have room there to pay for pay equity. What I said yesterday, and you know, there's a bit of divining tea leaves has been going on here, is that we're not going to have a specific line item, but the, our fiscal plan will clearly demonstrate that there is money in there to be able to meet the cost of pay equity.
MH: So why isn't it a line item?
CH: Because you don't basically, when you're going through a bargaining process, you don't tell the other side what's in the envelope. And you know, we wouldn't do that with any other process of bargaining. We've never done that with pay equity. The Crown has never put a line item in the budget that said here's how much we're setting aside for pay equity, but it has been there. And our fiscal plan will be the same.
MH: It'll be about $12 or $13 billion. Is that fair though? Within that ballpark, that's what we're dealing with.
CH: We certainly expect it to be a big number.
Yeah, so it's going to be a big number. If it's coming from the budget, that's 13, 14, 15, whatever billion —billion, not million— that won't be spent on something else. And I don't know that there's that much wiggle room. The free doctors visits aren't going to be funded by a capital gains tax, I think surely even Labour's accepted that, given that Treasury forecasts house prices not going up anytime soon. Something else will have to be cut to fund those. Nicola Willis has accused Labour of fiscal fraud, but until Labour finally comes up with their fiscal plan, it's a bit like waiting for Keri Hulme to come up with a sequel to The Bone People. You should, I suppose, give them the benefit of the doubt. But do you believe it is in any way possible for any party to find —let's be generous— $10 billion from the budget without ripping the guts out of the essentials and without undoing the hard work that we have endured over the past three years? Where the hell do you imagine it's going to come from?
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... and how does the result affect earnings and market performance? Matthew Goodson - Salt Funds Management.
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