Overview
A 2007 report from the New Zealand Institute, ‘So Far Yet So Close’ argued that New Zealand was more likely to be able to compete successfully in global markets by developing strengths in the weightless economy, because such types of economic activity are less exposed to New Zealand’s small scale and physical remoteness. The weightless economy includes adding more knowledge-based value to physical goods and services, engaging in foreign investment or offshoring production, through to activity that can be transported virtually such as the creative industries, biotech, or business services.
This project will examine the contribution that weightless activities could make to the New Zealand economy as well as the priorities for action in terms of creating a weightless economy in New Zealand. This includes policy areas such as tertiary education, R&D spending, attracting FDI, savings and capital markets, as well as communications infrastructure.
The first major area for work in this project is developing a broadband strategy for New Zealand. Our hypothesis is that world-class communications infrastructure is a very important piece of infrastructure for a physically remote economy like New Zealand.
The broadband strategy project will proceed in two steps, addressing two key sets of issues. The first is to define an aspiration for broadband quality in New Zealand based on an assessment of the economic value that we expect broadband to generate in New Zealand. The second area of focus is to develop recommendations as to how the private sector and the government can act to achieve this target. A series of presentations and two discussion papers will be released as part of this work on broadband strategy.