Tauranga ICT Innovation Centre

What a Tauranga ICT Innovation Centre could look like...

Since I returned to New Zealand three days ago, I have heard from more than one person about the prospects of an ICT Innovation Centre in Tauranga. Members of the BOP ICT Cluster are being surveyed on their views and a number of local agencies appear to have bought into the potential. So here is my quick take.

If the idea is to build a modern facility with a large pipe and pack it with a spectrum of local IT related businesses, it probably will not work. That is not what ICT Innovation Centres do. To understand this, you could do better than to visit the Waikato Innovation Park in Hamilton. I am actually there on Monday. Now that in my view is what an Innovation Centre is all about.

Waikato Innovation Park is New Zealand’s growth hub for Ag-Biotech businesses. This is where leading primary sector science, technology and research meets the catalyst of entrepreneurship in the form of the Park's 50 resident companies. Its proximity to the University of Waikato campus provides the scientific and academic input into the Park's available research pool.

It is a model that the architects behind the Tauranga ICT Innovation Centre should consider. They need to identify vertical sectors within the ICT space and map those against available academic research partners. By providing a research hub of this type, a Tauranga ICT Innovation Centre could become a Centre of Excellence attracting companies, researchers and investment from outside the region.

That's my quick take. No doubt, more detail later.