May 4, 2002

NEW ZEALAND -- Wellington's mobile Internet cluster of companies believes it will far exceed its targets, which include $1 million in exports, for the year ending June.

The cluster is also aiming for three collaborations between its 100 member companies, three collaborations with other specialist company clusters including seven in Wellington and 10 other opportunities that would come out of cluster membership.

So far, the target-beating evidence is anecdotal, says co-chair Jill Van Nortwick of Ericsson, the New Zealand subsidiary of the Swedish equipment maker. But at least one of the cluster's successes has kept jobs in New Zealand and resulted in additional export earnings. Co-chair Paul Treacy of Jungle Drum says jobs and skills would have been lost but for the cluster when the Australian owners of Voicenet, which developed the WordUp cellular voice recognition package for Telecom, decided to close up shop in Wellington. Jungle Drum, which specializes in short-messaging and text systems, had been merged into United States company BulletIN, which was seeking companies in the US that had voice experience. "I said to our US guys: `We've got guys in our cluster who can do this exact type of work'," Mr Treacy says. The result was that the seven Voicenet employees came over to Jungle Drum, resulting in applications for the US market being developed in New Zealand. "That's a great collaborative effort and that would not have happened but for the cluster," Mr Treacy says.

As well as heavyweight members such as Ericsson, Telecom and Vodafone, the cluster embraces smaller operations such as the Wellington branch of Jungle Drum and mobile Internet start-up BizA2Z. Ms Van Nortwick likens the cluster to the codeshare arrangements of airlines in which competitors collaborate in order to extend their reach into markets. Mr Treacy says the cluster is valuable because it gives big players like Telecom exposure and insight into what other companies are doing that might be difficult to obtain otherwise. Conversely, "New Zealand's small companies are very innovative and have some great ideas, but they need to get exposed to large multinationals and the cluster is a very good way of doing that". Another benefit from the cluster is that it enables small companies with defined skillsets to locate peers with expertise they need to broaden their competencies for specific projects.

To accomplish that, the cluster has monthly meetings, often based around themes in which members make "show-and-tell" presentations. "Also, if they've got their eyes open for business development, it gives them an opportunity to talk later after the presentation when we have our networking time," Ms Van Nortwick says. The cluster has educational representation from the Whitireia Community Polytechnic whose head of computing school, Trish Brimblecombe, is the cluster's facilitator. Ms Brimblecombe says involvement by tertiary institutions is essential for long-term success because they can gain first-hand knowledge of trends and developments and tailor training courses accordingly. She says the cluster is working with Industry New Zealand on a niche sector study of mobile wireless and is going through its member companies to establish a database of competencies, to be completed in the second half of this year. The cluster also works directly with Trade New Zealand.