Get off the Grass: Kickstarting New Zealand's Innovation Economy

Description

New Zealanders work harder and earn less than most other people in the developed world. Get Off the Grass is about how we can change that. In a brilliant intellectual adventure that takes us from David Ricardo and Adam Smith to economic geography and the science of complex networks, Shaun Hendy and Paul Callaghan tell us to 'get off the grass!' and start exporting knowledge rather than nature. The key to increasing New Zealand's prosperity, they argue, is innovation in high-tech niches. If we are going catch up with the countries that lure our young people away, we will need to learn to innovate like a city of four million people; we will need to start taking science seriously; we will need to start seeing ourselves as people of learning, not just of the land - and we will need to put our money where our mouths are.

Professor Shaun Hendy is deputy director of the MacDiarmid Institute and an Industry and Outreach Fellow at Industrial Research Ltd. In 2012 he won the Callaghan Medal and the Prime Minister's Science Media Communication Prize. Professor Sir Paul Callaghan (1947-2012; GNZM, FRS, FRSNZ) was one of New Zealand's most celebrated scientists. He was the 2011 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.

"Callaghan and Hendy have highlighted a critical issue--decades in which we have underinvested in both public and private sector investment in technological research and innovation. This is a welcome and timely contribution to the critical debate on how we are to become a more wealthy and healthy society." --Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister "This is an important book on where we have come from, who we are, and where we need to go. Based on an accessible discussion about the drivers of economic growth, it provides a valuable account of the significant challenges and substantial opportunities that New Zealand has." --Dr. David Skilling, director, Landfall Strategy Group-Singapore "This is an important book on where we have come from, who we are, and where we need to go. Based on an accessible discussion about the drivers of economic growth, it provides a valuable account of the significant challenges and substantial opportunities that New Zealand has." --Dr. David Skilling, director, Landfall Strategy Group-Singapore