Christoph Schumacher

Kiwis are clever people, very innovative people.

New Zealand registers a lot of patents per person, but the problem is these patents never end up in global products.

So we are good in coming up with things.

We are very poor in converting these good ideas into success stories.

Why is that?

We don't like failure, but to have a good idea, you need to be allowed to fail.

Great fan of Einstein, he famously said, if I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be called research.

When you start off something, you have no idea what will come out of it.

And that's the risky part.

And some ideas just don't work.

But you need to be allowed to fail a few times to get the big winner.

And you see, it's not very good in accepting sort of these upstart failures.

Or maybe we can't afford them because we are reasonably small and don't have the financial means.

It's probably a mix because we have success stories.

Fisher Paykel Healthcare is globally super strong.

We were able to build catamarans that were better than anyone else with big wind tunnels and a lot more money.

So in the boating industry, we've done great things.

Even the dairy sector, we've come up with good things.

So there are pockets, but it's not strategic.

I think that is part of the issue.