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The appointment of the University of Waikato's first Assistant Vice-Chancellor Pacific in February 2019 was an important milestone, not only recognising years of work and dedication by numerous Pacific and Maori staff, but triggering a new strategic direction for 'Pacific at Waikato'. This paper explains that journey, one that is underpinned by Pacific cultural legacies, strengths, values and identity; built on talanoa-va; informed by research, data analytics, student and community voice; combined with strategic thought and planning; and outworked in the pan-Pacific epithet, 'imua'. This is a story of resilience, determination, negotiating a pandemic, problem-solving and innovation in an environment that seeks a 'culture of belonging' and where Pacific learners are encouraged to be themselves in the pursuit of educational achievement. This paper will be of interest to education providers, stakeholders and policy makers.

Knowing how well higher education providers prepare learners for the working world is becoming increasingly important at all programme levels, and this is nowhere more apparent than with vocational education training. Ensuring our learners can hit the ground running and become immediately productive is essential for the relevance, and probably the survival, of New Zealand's Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs). Yet while there is much commentary about the challenges of transitions from tertiary study into employment and the 'employability skills gap', there is all too little given to how this is being addressed in teaching. This paper describes the work of an inter-institutional research collaboration into current approaches being used to embed skills that enhance employability. Drawing on a number of frameworks and models, the research team selected ten core attributes: "positive attitude," "communication," "teamwork," "self-management," "willingness to learn," "thinking skills," "resilience," "innovation," "entrepreneurship" and "cultural competence." The team then identified a range of strategies being used by highly commended teachers to enhance the ten employability skills: firstly, by observing classroom and online practices of 23 selected teachers from participating organisations; and secondly through follow-up interviews with the same teachers. The key takeaway of this research is raised awareness and intentionality of the overt and covert approaches vocational educators are using to enhance the employability of their students.

Contribution: This paper demonstrated on a large scale that explicit articulation of creativity-related learning goals on engineering syllabi is quite limited, and primarily limited to the first year of study. Engineering educators may need to do more to ensure creativity is explicitly addressed as an expected learning outcome within engineering syllabi. Background: Prior studies have shown inclusion of creativity within engineering syllabi and course activities are generally limited. Students may perceive educators do not value creativity, and their studies have limited influence on their creative skills. Studies conflict on whether creativity skills increase over completing an engineering degree. Creativity has been demonstrated to be an important skill for engineering professionals, but one not necessarily appropriately addressed in engineering programs. Few studies have attempted to quantify coverage of creativity material on a nation-wide scale, as opposed to in a single or select few institutions. Research Questions: 1) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate creativity and innovation-related learning goals and material on their course syllabi? and 2) To what extent do engineering educators explicitly articulate exposure to, or instruction in the use of, creativity heuristics within their course syllabi? Methodology: The online publicly accessible course outlines of 1109 compulsory courses from 42 degree programs accredited by two national engineering accreditation bodies were qualitatively analyzed in a two-stage approach using document analysis. Findings: Approximately 2% of compulsory electrical engineering course outlines explicitly articulate creativity-related material; only one course articulated engaging students in using creativity heuristics.

This paper examines how innovative small firms achieve innovation within lean environments. Writers taking a resource-based view (RBV) approach to innovation by small firms in lean environments have argued that they are resource-constrained through shortages of skilled labour, finance and social networks. This paper builds on the RBV approach by adopting a dynamic capabilities (DCs) lens to investigate how innovative small firms adopt and acquire DCs to achieve innovation in a lean environment in a small country with an open economy that is distant from major markets. We argue that entrepreneurs will engage in pragmatic solutions to overcome resource constraints. We provide qualitative evidence from a programme of 30 interviews and find that innovative small firms achieve innovation through ingenuity and patience. Our entrepreneurs use methods such as bricolage and bootstrapping and make cooperative arrangements with early adopters to maximise use of their limited resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what it takes to develop a common language and shared sense of purpose between Māori and the high-tech science sector. Robotics and automation, 3-D printing, sensors, and digital technologies are shaping New Zealand's economy in fundamental ways. If, as envisioned under New Zealand's Vision Mātauranga policy, Māori contribution to economic growth through distinctive Indigenous innovation is to be recognised and valued, then how this happens in these frontier science domains requires investigation. Findings are presented from the first phase of a longitudinal study of one National Science Challenge: Science for Technological Innovation (SfTI) -- Kia Kotahi Mai, Te Ao Pūtaiao me te Ao Hangarau. Collecting a variety of data from science, business and Māori participants, the findings suggest that while there is enabling macro policy, organisational and science team human and relational capacities require recalibrating. The authors outline a model of how this can be done through a focus on mātauranga (knowledge), tikanga (practice) and kaupapa (focus areas) and how SfTI is reshaping its organisational practice to align to this model. The research also identifies the important role of the science intermediary as crucial to this alignment within teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words recovery, landscape and experience come together in this paper's examples of how experiences are articulated in the landscapes of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. This paper describes the city in its early stages of recovery when community and urban design processes helped create a sense of place as art and creativity brought life to Christchurch. Examples are projects that rethink the city landscapes and transform them into experiencescapes. Street art, events and festivals act as pathways to experiences for the locals in their daily life and for visitors as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loading Docs is a New Zealand documentary initiative that supports the development, production and distribution of three-minute documentary films. Loading Docs is also a development and innovation initiative, building the capabilities of local filmmakers to fund, promote and distribute their work and increase their presence online. More broadly, Loading Docs aims to create a supportive community of filmmakers, increase opportunities for feature documentary development, and cultivate audience awareness of and appetite for New Zealand documentaries. This paper presents an account of the development of Loading Docs from the author's perspective as co-founder, co-executive producer and practice-led researcher. Reflecting on the experience of acting as both researcher and producer in the capacity of an experimental initiative, this article argues that research/practice partnerships create beneficial opportunities for knowledge-transfer and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated interventions resulted in changes in both the demand and supply of mental health services and necessitated agile adaptation and innovation from service providers. Aims: The aim of this study was to explore what innovative solutions were adopted in response to COVID-19 and the pandemic control measures, what opportunities and challenges were associated with these innovations, as well as to critically reflect on the longer-term sustainability of the innovations in the context of Aotearoa/New Zealand mental healthcare. Materials and methods: We used thematic analysis to analyse the data from the 23 in-depth interviews with helpline employees and general practitioners from 18 service providers that regularly engage in mental healthcare. Results: Two key themes related to COVID-19 and the pandemic control measures were identified from respondents’ accounts. These were “Technological innovations” and “Process innovations” where providers noted types of innovative solutions, and opportunities and challenges associated with those. The themes culminated in a meta theme “Sustainability of changes to service delivery” that appeared consistently in each theme and asks to consider how sustainable these innovative solutions might be in the long-term. Namely, sustainability of innovation was questioned in respect to the (a) innovative solutions being the emergency solutions with little or no impact analysis, (b) “returning back to normal” due to limited future funding and innovation as a sunk cost, and (c) sporadic and inconsistent innovation between service providers that does not contribute to quality and continuity of care from the systems perspective. Conclusion: COVID-19 and the measures of pandemic control were associated with an increase in innovative solutions from service providers. There were both opportunities and challenges associated with these innovative efforts and the sustainability of innovation was questioned. Future research about COVID-19 related innovation of service provision should focus on service user experiences and empirically measure the innovation safety and efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fo Guang Shan (Fóguāng shān 佛光山FGS), a Buddhist movement in the Chinese Mahāyāna tradition, has grown rapidly in the last fifty years to become a global network with nearly 180 branch temples. For almost thirty years, FGS Australia and New Zealand has invested heavily in the annual Buddha's Birthday Festival (BBF) in the form of weekend-long festivals in public spaces across the region. FGS Australia and New Zealand has served as an incubator, exporter, and importer of innovations to make Buddhism accessible to the public through these festivals. This article maps the flows of such innovations across the Pacific among the headquarters in Taiwan, the branches in Australia and New Zealand, and other regional headquarters. We argue that far from being a passive receiver, Buddhism in FGS Australia and New Zealand is an active participant in such flows. Low-risk, incremental innovations percolate through the branches, and are further developed or adapted as skillful means to popularise the Buddha's teachings according to local contexts. This article also examines some organisational and individual factors involved in balancing tradition and innovation in navigating the plural religious landscape of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a dynamic capability lens, we investigate the activities of non-executive directors (NEDs) of Anglo-American one-tiered corporate boards. We hypothesize that their perceptions of their own efficacy and of their duties rooted in resource dependence theory are motivators for dynamic capability relevant activities - activities that may be antecedents for organization dynamic capability - and may affect organization dynamic capability performance. Based on discussions with NEDs, we developed a list of NED and board activities which could be dynamic capability relevant and conducted a survey of Anglo-American organizations in Asia-Pacific and elsewhere. Our findings suggest partial positive association between resource dependence based duty and several dynamic capabilities-relevant activity groupings of NEDs. In one of those groupings, the NEDs' perceived efficacy may positively moderate that relationship and there may be positive association with organization performance. Our research provides a way forward in operationalizing the 3-element dynamic capability concept. It also suggests that the NEDs' perceptions of their efficacy and importance of their duty to provide resources are positively associated with dynamic capability relevant activities and to a limited extent organization performance. NEDs can exceed traditional normative baseline activities and suggest NED activity outside of the formal confines of the board meetings can play a part in the organization. By examining NEDs in a strategic risk perspective such as that addressed by dynamic capability this may yield important findings about NEDs that extend beyond the principal-agent board-executives relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright's exceptions are being taken seriously: a number of jurisdictions have expanded their exceptions by granting new broad user rights, some going so far as to enact fair use. The Australian Copyright Law Review Commission (ALRC), when tasked with determining whether copyright exceptions were fit for purpose, concluded that the expansion of copyright exceptions was necessary if copyright was to remain as a central driver of creation and innovation in Australia. The ALRC found that creativity and innovation was being stifled by unnecessarily and unjustified narrow and antiquated exceptions and people were unwittingly infringing copyright simply by engaging in reasonable everyday activities. The ALRC recommended fair use as the way of remedying copyright's ills. The article argues that New Zealand should adopt a broad fair use right as that proposed by the ALRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand has a flexible curriculum and assessment structure that enables unique courses to be offered in senior secondary schools. Five medium sized secondary schools that have developed unique courses were examined using a socio-material methodology to explore who was involved in the development and what considerations guided the decision making process. The principal and course developers from each school were interviewed and the data was analysed using Actor-Network Theory. It was found that each unique course was influenced by its specific context. Three conditions were identified across the case studies that enabled the innovative curriculum design: a perceived flexibility in national curriculum and assessment structures, a clear motivation or idea, and a passionate person (or people) to develop and maintain strong relational networks. School leaders can nurture these conditions by clarifying alignment between curriculum innovation, the school's strategic direction and values of the context, by strengthening the connections across the actors in the network and by encouraging flexible thinking about constraints and possibilities. This study provides an example of the use of Actor-Network Theory to explore curriculum innovation and explores the positioning of the environmental context as an actor within socio-material networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This opinion piece considers the relationship between computer science, industrial innovation and New Zealand’s research future, taking as its basis the case of Weta Digital and its continual development of computer-automated tools that replace cognitive labour. This process of computer automation offers a glimpse of the potential direction in which industrial and research production may move over the coming decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]