No 8 Wired

Singapore’s Straits Times focuses on the entrepreneurial spirit driving NZ’s booming science industry. “Over time, the Number 8 wire came to epitomise a culture of adaptability and creativity, a ‘can-do spirit’ of which the Kiwis are proud … Call it luck of the draw, or conditioning in a rugged and isolated terrain, but in spite of a population as tiny as Singapore’s four million, NZ has contrived to produced at least three Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and physiology, a world champion rugby team in the All Blacks, and a world-class soprano in Kiri Te Kanawa.” Leading research institutes such as the Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery and Auckland University’s Liggins Institute are luring large numbers of overseas scientists to NZ, establishing economic and information links (eg. with international pharmaceutical giant Pfizer) with foreign academies, and promoting careers in science to NZ youth.