IRL appoints Professor Shaun Hendy as Industry and Outreach Fellow

IRL Chief Executive Shaun Coffey has announced MacDiarmid Institute Deputy Director and IRL Distinguished Scientist Professor Shaun Hendy has been appointed IRL’s first Industry and Outreach Fellow.

IRL’s Industry and Outreach Fellowships have been established to assist the New Zealand high-tech manufacturing sector in realising its potential as a key driver of economic growth through leveraging New Zealand’s world-class research and development expertise.

Professor Hendy’s objective will be to build a complex system modelling group at IRL that can use advanced mathematical methods to characterise, model and understand the New Zealand innovation ecosystem and its relationship with the world economy.

Shaun Coffey says that such analysis is critical if New Zealand is to grow its innovation ecosystem and high-value manufacturing sector. “In New Zealand there is a wealth of great ideas and innovative companies but collectively we face many disadvantages due to our small size, distance from markets and lack of access to capital.

“It is widely understood that active management of the innovation ecosystem is critical in small economies like New Zealand but to do this effectively it is important to first have a deep understanding of the nature and complexities of the ecosystem.”

Professor Hendy says by using data provided by the annual TIN100 Industry Analysis Report, which lists New Zealand’s top 100 technology companies, his team at IRL will apply mathematical modelling to construct a multifactor measure of innovation in New Zealand which he hopes will enable policy makers to make better informed decisions in this highly complex area.

“It’s a great opportunity to do something that is very important for New Zealand but would be very difficult without IRL’s support. I am very familiar with applying mathematical models to characterise behaviour at the nanoscale and am looking forward to applying these skills at the macro level,” he says.

He has hit the ground running, having already developed a Google Earth-based New Zealand innovation ecosystem map using information accessible from international patent databases.

“There has been a lot of interest in how inventors and inventive companies interact geographically. This map shows where inventors are, whether they are based at a Crown Research Institute, university or private company, and shows how they are linked to their peers across the country.”

Professor Hendy says it is particularly important that New Zealand inventors, who are spread widely across the country, make a concerted effort to collaborate.

“In cities like Sydney or Melbourne, it is much easier for inventors to collaborate due to living and working in close proximity to one another. In New Zealand we need to work hard to overcome this barrier to innovation. We need to learn to act like a city of four million people.”

Professor Hendy says the map illustrates there are already strong linkages to peers overseas and has thrown up some unexpected relationships between New Zealand companies - for example, the map shows a relationship between inventors at Fisher and Paykel Healthcare and Fonterra.

“Finding out about relationships such as this shows how much we have to learn about the nature of the innovation ecosystem in New Zealand,” he says.