The establishment of the Advanced Technology Institute addresses a significant need for business.
Innovation is now essential for business success and the ATI’s focus on getting new ideas to market faster is highly appropriate.
Bringing business and science closer together and supporting business-led growth in new technologies will be crucial for New Zealand’s business competitiveness.
ATI will bring a new way of operating in the science-business area, with much potential for economic growth, and New Zealand business will have much to gain from partnering with the new institution.
There will be many ways that ATI will be able to work with business, such as helping to build science-business consortiums to develop new products, organising secondments between universities and business, administering research and development, among many other avenues.
It will be important to focus on achieving more rapid commercialisation of world-class new ideas. It will be important that ATI acts in a highly cooperative fashion with universities, polytechnics, Crown Research Institutes, private research establishments and the business community.
It will also be important to focus on achieving the greatest possible flow of information and involvement between science and business.
The establishment of the ATI is an extremely positive undertaking.
It will be up to the business and science communities to get the best out of the Institute in the interests of a flourishing applied science sector and a growing economy.
Phil O’Reilly is Chief Executive of BusinessNZ based in Wellington. He was the Guest Speaker at the Indian Newslink Sir Anand Satyanand Lecture this year, held on Monday, July 30 at Stamford Plaza Hotel in Auckland.
