DIY another day

We have a unique way of operating. The Kiwi inventor can be found tinkering away in a garden shed on a motorcycle that will one day shatter land-speed records, or spending weekends making splatter films with puppets and killer lawnmowers.

Our isolation is not a barrier to our inventiveness; if anything, it has shaped our gift for innovation.

Our great heroes are one-man-bands who have gone it alone; we are a nation of professional DIY-ers.

Some of our greatest export successes started in the garden shed.

But this very same mindset can also often be our failing on the world stage. Not all businesses have the capacity to successfully internationalise their innovations. In our determination to do things our way, and on our own; to be satisfied with what we’ve got, we often ignore the expertise and opportunities that the rest of the world can offer.
 
This was one of the most sobering findings from research conducted for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise by economic researcher Tony Smale.

The report, called Playing to our Strengths: Creating value for Kiwi firms was released recently. In it, Smale reveals some of the national characteristics that make us great, but also stop us from achieving significant international economic success.

While English is an international language, New Zealanders are just not fluent in the dialect of business.

This is consistent with wider NZTE research within the export community is telling us and with what wider business research is revealing.

We’re seen as ‘high in human values, but low in business acumen’. We’re friendly enough but we’re not perceived as having the smarts or the sophistication to dio business internationally.

Potential offshore business contacts often think we're odd. We can be so passionate about our ‘baby’, that we sometimes seem abrupt. We can be unsophisticated in our business attitudes: we are awkward with concepts such as mixing business and pleasure.

We don't like to ‘beat around the bush’ - even though in many cultures relationship-building is key to a successful business partnership.

In fact, we usually don't even want business partners - but we want everyone to love our products and want to buy them.

What these traits illustrate is that our isolation is both inspiring, and inhibiting.

New Zealanders have reasonably simple aspirations, known colloquially as ‘the three B's: the bach, the boat and the BMW’.

When a Kiwi business owner has achieved those, or whatever luxuries are considered a similar level of comfort within their peer group, they will often succumb to ‘enoughism’.

Just this week, research from the University of Waikato suggests that SMEs are happy to stay that way, largely through lack of desire to lose their business independence.