Duncan Mackintosh, CEO of WaikatoLink Ltd and responsible for industry engagement and commercialisation for the University of Waikato, talks about innovation and enterprise in his TENZ 2015 Keynote presentation.

In introducing himself, Duncan talked of the influence of his parents directing him towards entrpreneurship and of unsuccessfully trying to buy a veterinary business while still at university in New Zealand. After graduating in 1995 with a veterinary science degree from Massey University, Duncan worked as a vet for seven years – including a year in Britain working on the foot and mouth disease outbreak. He credits the dispiriting work in destroying thousands of animals as a changing influence in his life – moving from the challenge of growing his own business to one of deciding how to make a difference.

Returning to New Zealand he was encouraged by his father to look at the emerging biotechnology industry, and he approached over 20 chief executives in companies asking where they saw gaps in bridging Science and Technology.

He got a start in a company at Ruakura in Hamilton and was part of the founding of the Technology incubator there. One of the early major tenants was the University of Waikato and he has remained at WaikatoLink for 12 years. In this role a major focus has been working with companies such as Ligar to develop products that make a difference by solving big problems – such as mastitis.

Identifying the applications is an important part of the innovation process and he talked about approaching 100 significant production companies asking them to look at what they produced and getting them to think about what could be taken out of the their products that would have value – both the good and the bad things . He talked about the process of innovation and the attributes of the people working in that area. It is important to be able to specifically define the nature of the problem in order that what you produce will finally fly. You are learning all the time – its not about how much you know its about asking the right questions. He emphasised that the key is in asking basic questions of the customer – “What problems do you have ? How can we solve them?”

With Ligar, he has worked on creating molecular impregnated polymers (MIPS) – compounds designed to extract specific compounds from a production process. He worked with the wine industry in Australia. After bushfires the smoke can impregnate the wine produced and he outlined how they set about designing a polymer to extract the offensive particles on an industrial scale. They identified a number of other high value products that can be extracted from waste products – products such as rare earth elements from mining waste, pesticides from final products in agriculture and chromium extracted from the waste for the leather industry.

Collaboration was identified as important to the process of innovation, providing a way of New Zealand getting a competitive advantage. He stressed that in forming your innovation team “lots of differing contributing skills are required and entrepreneurship is only one of those skills.”

He closed by making some observations on the situation in New Zealand which he thought was lacking in aspiration and inspiration – and he saw growing these qualities as two of our greatest challenges in moving the country forwards. In relation to university graduates he commented that: “Now they can see their end points being realised much quicker. Tools are becoming more readily available and we are seeing many more students coming forward in developing things like computer applications.”