Goal 4

Prosperity Through Innovation

Auckland's thriving culture of innovation has created an economy that is adaptable, flexible and resilient to future change: we grow, attract and retain globally competitive businesses. As the Pacific's leading city-region, we find it easy to attract talented people. Sustainability and quality of life is at the heart of our prosperity, ensuring environmental excellence and choice and opportunity for all Aucklanders.

This goal is about securing the region's long-term prosperity through innovation and creativity.

This goal provides an emphasis for the future on:

  • Creating prosperity based on sustainable practices.
  • Investment in people, research, infrastructure and technology to boost resource productivity.
  • A transition to sustainable materials and production techniques.
  • Moving towards a value-added, knowledge-based, resilient and innovation-driven economy.

Opportunities

There are a growing number of economic opportunities associated with sustainability:

  • A potential competitive advantage for New Zealand in new renewable energy sources (marine, wave, geothermal, wind etc). 
  • Focusing on sustainability can help to strengthen the region's economy by making more efficient use of scarce resources, and shifting from a low value-added, commodity based economy towards a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy. 
  • Our current economic focus is on improving labour productivity. To ensure a sustainable future, we need to expand this to include resource productivity and shift towards a far more efficient use of scarce resources, including land. This can be achieved through a combination of structural changes (i.e. changes in industry mix) and better practices amongst businesses. Agglomeration of business activities into higher density employment areas, served by good infrastructure, will help to preserve land for future generations and can support higher productivity levels than other urban forms. 
  • Auckland has an important role in New Zealand's long-term economic transformation. While rising oil and energy costs will push transport costs up, the value of goods that we export needs to increase for our products to remain competitive in global markets. This will provide the base for a wealthier society which can afford to pay for environmental and social protection. 
  • Communications technology offers great opportunities to strengthen the region's presence in the ‘weightless economy providing services and products virtually and reducing our dependence on physical transportation to move products to markets. Facilitating movements of ideas and contracts using modern communications is both a smart and sustainable way of reducing carbon emission, as well as keeping transaction and energy costs down.

Challenges

Economic policies will need to equip Auckland to anticipate and deal with the challenges of the future, including global economic change, climate change, population growth and demographic change. The region's recent economic growth has been underpinned by drivers that cannot be relied upon in the medium to long-term. Structural factors such as labour force skills and New Zealand's economic position internationally will continue to pose challenges for the prosperity of the region.

  • Reliance on imports - like many cities, Auckland is dependent on imported resources, particularly energy, for its continued functioning. Whilst this may be an economically efficient way of operating in the short and longer-term there are risks associated with such supply lines. The challenge is to manage these risks by diversifying sources, including some local production, and managing demand. As some natural resources become scarcer and more expensive we can expect price rises for both products and services such as transport. The value of goods that we export needs to increase for our products to remain competitive in global markets. 
  • Remoteness and scale - our small size within the global economy and distance from major markets make us vulnerable to global shifts and shocks. Our firms must compete with others internationally - both for market share and to attract and retain talented people. As environmental awareness grows, issues such as carbon neutrality may become common purchasing considerations, particularly in affluent markets. We need to better understand the economic implications of ‘carbon neutrality' and ‘oil shortages', as well as identify trade-offs and develop appropriate policy responses. 
  • Education and skills - economic growth will not be sustainable in the longer term unless we can educate and train people so that they have the skills required by our businesses. Innovation is driven by education in the broadest sense and can be more strongly underpinned by ensuring better access to educational resources at all levels. We cannot know now what future skill requirements will be, but we can ensure that people have opportunities for life-long learning and that they have skills that are flexible and adaptable.

Indicative Strategic Responses

Shift required to meet goal  Indicative strategic responses which will contribute to meeting the goal
Create prosperity based on sustainable practices
  • Increase research and development investment for new product and process development.
  • Create markets for sustainable design and building practices, technologies and research.
  • Develop competitive advantages in sustainable technologies.
  • Continuously innovate to improve resource productivity and to reduce business activities' environmental impacts.
  • Agglomerate similar or complementary economic activities so as to increase productivity gains.
  • Provide support to businesses transitioning to sustainable production practices.
  • Increase our rural sector's economic potential for both domestic and export markets.Increase the rural sector's emphasis on value-added products and services.
Put people at the centre of our thinking and action
  • Support and encourage businesses to adopt flexible work practices that assist all groups to participate in employment.
  • Improve the educational achievement levels for low-decile schools and underachieving students.
  • Provide equitable access to learning opportunities that enable Aucklanders to meet market demand with changing skill-set requirements.
  • Retain and attract talented people by offering a high-quality environment and lifestyle.
Build a carbon neutral future
  • Better understand the economic implications of ‘carbon neutrality' and ‘oil shortages', identify the likely trade-offs and develop appropriate policy responses.
Value te Ao Māori
  • Equip our whanau with knowledge, skills and experience to succeed and prosper as Māori.
  • Develop and utilise Māori cultural capital for cultural and economic prosperity.
  • Maintain and realise collective and inalienable asset base of whanau, hapu and iwi.
Think in generations, not years
  • Complete the CBD and waterfront development.
  • Equip Auckland with reliable and resilient energy, transport and broadband infrastructure.
Integrate thinking, planning, investment and action
  • Take an integrated, region-wide approach to coordinating programmes and agencies in the innovation, tourism and skill-development sectors.
  • Build Auckland's capability as a major event destination.
    • Ensure that investments in Auckland events leave a positive legacy.
  • Strengthen collaboration between Auckland's businesses, universities and Crown Research Institutes and identify the next Centres of Research Excellence to be funded in Auckland.