Went to a very pleasant forum on Wireless Technology out of Canada, organised by Canadian consulate http://bit.ly/bghGY + NZ Wireless Community http://bit.ly/MmmFo
part of the wider NZICT group http://www.ict.org.nz/ which was formed in December 2008.
After a visit to Australia, NZ was a calling off point to the trade delegate and representatives from 3 of the 4 orgs on the trip, prior to an onward trip up to Japan. I met Sabrina Chan from their Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, who talked about Ontario's offer www.ontarioexports.com and we heard from:
- Wavefront (wireless commercialisation centre - not for profit - quite interesting - the usual incubator offer PLUS a mobile wireless testbed for US and European networks - avoids the need to fly there to test things!). Good location in Vancouver, close to Seattle where AT&T and Microsoft and.... etc have large R&D facilities.
- Redline Communications who didn't speak. (Their speaker had the 'flu and so was not able to attend - its not that they were shy!). Provider of fixed and mobile wireless broadband solutions.
- Fieldworker Products - mobile data solutions..for businesses with 'field workers' funnily enough. Probably have some competition here in NZ, but seem to be doing very well in Canada.
- SandVine Inc who ' protect and improve the quality of internet experiences'. Meaning they have kit and software that helps ISPs manage broadband traffic. Very interesting presentation from the point of view of the graphs showing the breakdown in type of traffic (P2P, web browsing, email, tunnelling etc) and time of day. Those damn P2P networks chew through a lot of brandwidth!. Very thoughtful and well paced presentation by Richard O'Halloran who spoke.
Anyway - the point of the post..how useful are trade organisations like this for NZ companies going overseas?. I think I'm reasonably well qualified to talk on the subject having also represented UK Trade and Investment in the past.
Well, I think they can play their part. But you also need to know what you want in advance. Often you get presented with a range of assistance and services along the lines of cheap office space, legal advice, visa assistance, introduction into local networks etc. I think the last 2 are probably most helpful, especially local networks. And this is where you really need to know who you want to be introduced to in advance. Which means you have to do some homework first, and then figure out if the representative that you are talking to is well connected or not-or if not, willingly to go search on your behalf.
Ideally if you are looking at a location where NZTE also has a presence, then you may be able to get support from the local NZTE trade / investment rep as well. This can be helpful in some countries since the local NZTE rep + in country inward investment contact can put on a bit of a show and tell event and roll out the red carpet for delegations. They ARE often well connected and are known for providing good networking opportunities as well as a good spread..which helps.
I think one of the challenges for NZ companies is that typically an initial presence in an overseas country might be fairly small by world standards - 1-3 people lets say. Whereas many of the performance criteria that the development agencies have to work to measure things like 'jobs created', ' factories built' etc. Perhaps a little out of touch. But we cannot poke fun at the Government statisticians and corporate performance measure developers too much..they want continuity in order to demonstrate progress and that a difference is being made...and they want to compare themselves with other countries, who use similar measures. What's that? we should poke fun anyway? Ok. Fair enough. Flipping pencil and paper pushing out of touch number crunchers..what do they know?. Ha. : ) I can only say that because I may have been part of that infrastructure once, briefly, in a former life, for a short period of time...etc etc. (And I was part of a team that was changing the way performance was measured). Honest.
Seriously though, the point is that for NZ companies to break through that ' oh..you only want an office for 1 person' moment, and to secure help from said agencies, I think you have to have a pretty strong proposition formulated before you approach them for help. And it is possible to make a good case: my results, those of my predecessor and the guy now in the job at UKTI demonstrate that many NZ companies can do well on the international stage, even from an initially small beachhead. Just be prepared to have to argue your case, and point to examples like Metra, Orion Health, Jade, 42 Below, A2, Xero...
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