Dec 18, 2023Liked by Dave Heatley, Mary Ellen Gordon
There are many rich insights in this article. In our own productivity work with the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, the AERU was supported to engage with research users at every stage. This included working with Vincent Heeringa to produce the resources now on the Value Project website: https://ourlandandwater.nz/the-value-project/.
Thank you for the comment and for sharing the link. It would be great (and productive!) if there were some higher level information system that would enable people to come to a single portal and use it to easily find information like that, similar information about other sectors, information about other aspects of agriculture, etc. I suspect that would reveal lots of sources of information that are valuable, but under-utilised, as well as important gaps.
It's also interesting that the linked material comes from the agricultural sector. For some reason that seems to have tighter linkages between people producing papers and reports and the people doing the thing the papers and reports are about than is the case in some other areas.
I totally agree with your first comment. In a recent keynote address, I call those systems and portals "Investing in knowledge infrastructure". It is more important than investing in physical infrastructure (endogenous growth theory). The European Union does this really well; New Zealand not so much.
If you replaced the word productivity by demography you would find a similar disconnection between analysis and action. Maybe we have a quantitatively ignorant and disconnected policy community which is replicated in other places.
I believe that disconnection is at the core of a lot of problems. People are comfortable in their silos, but most of our biggest problems are system level problems that are only likely to be solved if we get out of those silos to see other perspectives, access other types of expertise, etc.
A rather odd article. It seems rather naïve to use the parallel of the Retirement Commission.
The big problem they need to solve is just getting people to save for retirement. The solution is simple: put enough money into retirement savings. Everything else is of second or third order.
The idea that boosting the productivity of individual businesses is that simple is laughable.
I also found it interesting that a lecturer in data science struggled to find things on the internet. In about thirty seconds, I found this:
Thanks for the reference to the Productivity Hub, Adam. I didn't realise you were still in the game! If you are in New Zealand, do pop by one of our Sausage Roll seminars. I'll get you to sign my copy of WoN!
There are many rich insights in this article. In our own productivity work with the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, the AERU was supported to engage with research users at every stage. This included working with Vincent Heeringa to produce the resources now on the Value Project website: https://ourlandandwater.nz/the-value-project/.
Thank you for the comment and for sharing the link. It would be great (and productive!) if there were some higher level information system that would enable people to come to a single portal and use it to easily find information like that, similar information about other sectors, information about other aspects of agriculture, etc. I suspect that would reveal lots of sources of information that are valuable, but under-utilised, as well as important gaps.
It's also interesting that the linked material comes from the agricultural sector. For some reason that seems to have tighter linkages between people producing papers and reports and the people doing the thing the papers and reports are about than is the case in some other areas.
I totally agree with your first comment. In a recent keynote address, I call those systems and portals "Investing in knowledge infrastructure". It is more important than investing in physical infrastructure (endogenous growth theory). The European Union does this really well; New Zealand not so much.
If you replaced the word productivity by demography you would find a similar disconnection between analysis and action. Maybe we have a quantitatively ignorant and disconnected policy community which is replicated in other places.
I believe that disconnection is at the core of a lot of problems. People are comfortable in their silos, but most of our biggest problems are system level problems that are only likely to be solved if we get out of those silos to see other perspectives, access other types of expertise, etc.
A rather odd article. It seems rather naïve to use the parallel of the Retirement Commission.
The big problem they need to solve is just getting people to save for retirement. The solution is simple: put enough money into retirement savings. Everything else is of second or third order.
The idea that boosting the productivity of individual businesses is that simple is laughable.
I also found it interesting that a lecturer in data science struggled to find things on the internet. In about thirty seconds, I found this:
https://nzproductivity.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PH/pages/753888/Research+using+the+LBD
Looks like it may even be run by the Productivity Commission.
On it, I counted 14 working papers and three journal articles by current or past Productivity Commission researchers.
Thanks for the reference to the Productivity Hub, Adam. I didn't realise you were still in the game! If you are in New Zealand, do pop by one of our Sausage Roll seminars. I'll get you to sign my copy of WoN!
Good discussion.