I thought it was interesting that a recent blog post from Frances Chan on Stop Press titled ‘NZ has no internet entrepreneurs’ stirred up so much debate.
The post was in reaction to the fact that there were no finalists in the ‘Internet Entrepreneur of the Year’ category at the 2009 NZ Internet Awards as the category didn’t attract enough talent. I think the responses to the post highlight some important issues (i.e. the awards weren’t published widely enough and the judging criteria is too strict), however fundamentally I think Frances Chan has a point. With a few high profile exceptions such as TradeMe and Xero, we are not progressive enough in the digital environment. But, it’s not just entrepreneurs that are needed; we need the entire New Zealand business community to embrace digital.
It’s not all bad and one great recent example was the TUANZ Award winning Pocketsmith for whom Chris Keall from the NBR said, “for anybody who believes that software, as a ‘weightless’ export has the potential to help turn New Zealand’s economy around, it’s an inspiring story.” We just need more examples like this.
Digital is our country’s big opportunity – our window to the world. As Rod Drury recently posted on KiwiBlog “Broadband and connecting New Zealand digitally to the rest of the planet IS the biggest silver bullet for turning New Zealand around that I’ve seen in my business career”. For New Zealand’s entire history we have struggled with geographic isolation, something the digital era has largely removed. According to Google, 65% of New Zealand’s Internet traffic heads offshore, some of which undoubtedly results in a loss to the local economy as New Zealand users purchase products online from other markets. We know online importation is strong but what about exporting New Zealand products and technology to the world?
Currently, approximately 40% of New Zealand’s Internet traffic comes from international visitors with TradeMe and news, travel and sports sites the most visited – suggesting the eyeballs are predominantly expats or tourists with little visitation to business or e-commerce sites. Despite this our digital development is still largely focused on a domestic audience. Isn’t it time we took a good look at the opportunities the rest of the world present. There is no reason why digital thinking couldn’t become our biggest export. If Estonia with a population of just 1.34 million can produce Skype and Joost*, there is no reason why New Zealand can’t create world leading digital platforms. You could argue that the sale of TradeMe, our leading case study, injected $750m into the local economy with the shareholders reinvesting their earnings into new projects and New Zealand charities. That was three years ago and the subject of significant publicity but it has all been a bit quiet since then.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that it’s not the New Zealand Wide Web; it’s the World Wide Web. New Zealand needs to adjust its ambitions to ensure that not only do we deliver a domestically strong digital culture but grow a digital export economy. We have done it in many other industries and with the right focus there is no doubt we can do it in digital.
*For more information on the digital culture in Estonia that lead to the creation of Skype have a look at this BBC article from 2004.
Author: Robert Harvey, ZenithOptimedia
