• How significant will your sector be in 2010 ?

• What outcomes contributed?

• What competencies were required?

• What investment was needed?

The deadline for these inputs is 31 October 1998.

Always interested in any shifts of the wind which may affect their funding Crown Research Institutes and other Foundation for Research, Science and Technology funded bodies have been quick to nominate themselves as coordinators for their sectors' Foresight efforts. Already the Building Research Association has held a construction sector Foresight session and the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences has spearheaded the petroleum exploration session. The Manufacturers Federation will have hosted its Foresight meeting on 23 April. But what of industries which have never had any significant input from Vote Science? When one looks at New Zealand's sunrise industries (such as they are), the electronics industry, the wine industry or the software industry one sees a pattern of very successful private sector investment without much significant public science input. Take a look at very new industries such as the large bird industry (emus and ostriches) or the internet based industry (Hotdog, Dnews or 7am) and once again Vote Science has not contributed much. If these are the sunrise industries why do sunset industries like wool and sheepmeat claim such a huge proportion of Vote Science and will the Foresight Project do anything to change this?

Manufacturers Federation spokesman Gilbert Peterson certainly hopes so. "We certainly support the aims of Foresight and the last thing we want to see is this becoming just another giant talkfest," he says.

Mr Peterson says the restructuring of the DSIR into industry sector businesses has not delivered any stronger relationship between industry and science. He says the focus of CRIs remains on the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and the priorities given the foundation remain largely science production driven rather than market driven.

"We have enormous respect for the skills and expertise contained within the science community but for many of our people that expertise is not accessible. We have to do more than just align industry and science, they have to become integrated," he says.

Orientating New Zealand industry so that not only does it produce processed agricultural product but, as with the Danish dairy industry, also sells the equipment which manufacturers use to produce that product is where the Federation sees manufacturers adding value on to the primary production base.

"People don't appreciate that last year we exported $11,000 million worth of fabricated metal (including electronics) compared to $10,000 million worth of primary products. Manufacturing has overtaken agriculture as our primary export earner and the scope for growth is still large."

But what of industries which don't even exist yet? Take a look at the Silicon Valley experience. The principal drivers in California have been excellent universities and engineering schools at Stanford and Berkeley, some Department of Defense funding, and an investment industry which traces its roots back through the golden age of Hollywood to the Californian goldrush. Two world leading industries have grown because private investors thought they could make money, not because a government department was giving money away. While the Manufacturers Federation believes too much would be lost were the MoRST annual budget just turned into lower corporate tax rates, one has to question the value of research which makes no appreciable difference to national industry.

At the market end of the equation is Trade New Zealand. David Espie, strategic development manager, says Trade New Zealand is encouraging companies and sector groups to participate in Foresight because its scope goes beyond science to provide a bigger picture of the future, of which science is a part.

"The other good thing about this is the way groups are self-defined. That allows us to get away from the rigid definitions of sectors which have characterised the past."

Mr Espie is another who recognises changing the way science dollars are invested is an uphill battle.

"Where a traditional industry exists it typically has the mass which can identify specific areas suitable for government research. In less structured, less well defined industries people don't even consider the possibility. Even the transaction costs to generate a common set of priorities can be prohibitive," he says.

Another problem for younger industries is time priorities. If a company has a choice between attending a Foresight meeting or meeting a customer offshore the offshore customer wins every time. Public sector time scales are also a problem. "If you have a project where the bidding process starts in 2000, work gets underway by 2003 and the first usable technology doesn't become available until 2005, that is a very long cycle for some new companies." Technology This is the reason Trade New Zealand has focused increasingly on programmes to assist businesses to create industries based on novel designs using existing or OEM technology. While Mr Espie agrees that one needs to be able to understand these technologies to begin with if one is to use them (particularly so in biotechnology), he says one must look at the opportunities created by technology within a global context.