Perspectives on Size

There are times when you just want to say something and this something was caused by two things - first - attending Sir Paul Callaghan's lunchtime talk in Dunedin yesterday about the sustainable development of New Zealand's business sector  [the content is here] and second, reading this morning that Air New Zealand is one of the world's top five airlines.

Sir Paul presents a set of measures in his presentation that show that NZ is one of the most unequal societies in the OECD in terms of income distribution, but also one of the most democratic. It has one of the best school systems and one of the worst child endangerment rates. One of the least corrupt societies but with one of the worst imprisonment rates - worst meaning the proportion of the population incarcerated.

He is interested in destroying the mythologies that hold us back from achieving significant economic growth and that send such a high proportion of our educated graduates to live and work overseas. That means creating the kind of businesses which can achieve sufficient scale to provide the kind of national income per capita that supports a sophisticated society and provides jobs that smart people want.

I've done a lot of research in the past three years among businesses, investors and exporters and I know we suffer from a scale problem - on a number of levels.

In terms of business scale we have a lot of small to medium sized businesses and not many global giants. Well, one. In terms of the quality and scale of our scientific output it's very good - but about as large as that of a single major overseas city. Say, Boston or Edinburgh.  Our economy is the size of Delaware.

What's more, as a small but highly developed island nation in the South Pacific we defy easy pigeon-holing.

Typically small island nations are in the world's economic long tail - one of 150 countries you never hear about except as tourism destinations or earthquake locations.

Well, we do that too - but a lot more besides.  The 'lot more besides' is the hard sell because it doesn't fit the general rule. People look to Asia, US and Europe for high tech innovation and design expertise, but we do that here, really well.

We don't even know ourselves how well we do it. Perhaps we should have called ourselves the Switzerland of the South Pacific after all.