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Technical Innovation and Economic Growth in New Zealand
Technical Innovation and Economic Growth in New
Zealand
MEDIA RELEASE
4 September 2016
A new book looks at technological innovation in New Zealand from the end of the first world war until ‘Think Big’ in the 1980s.
In a remarkable way a great number of the technologies involved were foretold in Volume 1 of the New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology published in 1918. These included the manufacture of steel from west coast iron sands, geothermal power, electrical chemical processing in Fiordland, pasture improvement, pinus radiata as the best tree for forestry and, anticipating the Cook Strait Cable, the favourable economics of long-distance transmission when electricity could be produced in large power stations. There was also a paper on the need for research in the meat industry.
The authors of the articles were drawn from a new breed of technologists with formal training in science and engineering, and a belief in systematic research and development.
The new book describes the progress of these technologies together with that of others important to the economy over the next sixty years such as those in the dairy industry, looking at the technical, political, economic and fiscal influences on their development.
A final chapter traces the lead up to Think Big and the factors involved in the decision-making.
In the period covered by this book,
1918 to 1980, New Zealanders, along with people in other
Western economies, experienced the fastest increase in the
standard of living in history, however the importance of
technological innovation to economic growth was not
recognised by New Zealand economists at the time and did not
become a part of accepted economic thinking until the end of
the century. We now have a government ministry with
innovation in its name.
The book is Technological
Innovation and Economic Growth – 1918 to Think
Big
It is published by Infotour Guides and further
details can be found at http://www.infotourguides.nz/
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