[wordup] Time to move back to New Zealand?

[Adam Shand]

It's funny I'd never thought of #8 bailing wire as a Worse Is Better
approach but really I guess that's what it is.  No wonder that wiki page
made so damn much sense. :)

  http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WorseIsBetter
  http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WorseIsBetter

Adam.

Via: Eugene Keam <eugene at bomblogic.com>
From: http://digitalmass.boston.com/news/2002/05/16/new_zealand.html

New Zealand tops, U.S. falls in start-up activity
By Samuel Fromartz, Reuters, 05/16/02  

WASHINGTON — Will New Zealand become known as the next Silicon Valley? 

Well, it might, if a new global survey is to be believed. It shows New
Zealanders are among the most entrepreneurial people around.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor included that startling finding in a
survey of 29 countries. It also found entrepreneurial activity in the
United States fell a whopping 30 percent last year. Blame the dot-com
collapse, recession and a decline in venture capital funding.

According to the annual poll, released by Babson College and the
Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, 11.7 percent of all
adults in the United States were involved in a start-up in 2001, down
from 16.7 percent a year earlier.

In comparison, 18.2 percent of all adults in New Zealand -- about
420,000 people -- were tinkering at one venture or another.

"New Zealand is the most entrepreneurial nation on the face of the
Earth, at the moment," said Professor William Bygrave of Babson College
in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

So what the heck is happening in New Zealand that isn't happening in the
United States?

The researchers pointed to familiar factors for the decline in the
United States, most notably the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the
contraction of venture capital and the 2001 recession.

Bygrave guessed that the spate of bad news was keeping Americans from
doing anything particularly rash like quitting their current job to form
a start-up.

Americans also had a dim near-term view of start-ups. Only 35 percent
believed that "good opportunities will develop over the next six
months," compared with 52 percent in 2000 and 57 percent in 1999.

The report from New Zealand -- a country included in the survey for the
first time -- explained the local success this way: "Blokes in sheds,
agricultural Field Days, backyard contraptions: the conditions of New
Zealand life have promoted a certain kind of eccentric experimentation
that has led to Kiwis often being world class in the fields they choose
to enter."

It also put a lot of weight on a so-called "No. 8 wire" approach New
Zealanders were said to take, in which "almost anything can be repaired,
improved or invented with a piece of fencing wire."

In short, Kiwis "see opportunities that others miss and know how to
devise simple and effective solutions using limited resources," the
report said.

That defines an entrepreneur pretty well.

New Zealand also ranked No. 1 in the rate of "angel investing," or those
putting money into privately held ventures. It found 6.2 percent of the
population participated vs. 6.1 percent in the United States, which was
ranked second.

In the United States, however, the total amount of angel money dwarfed
the rest of the world an professional venture capital investing,
reaching $129.2 billion in 2001.

Overall, New Zealand ranked No. 1 in the number of people taking
advantage of an opportunity, meaning they would give up a job to start a
company. Australia ranked No. 2, Mexico was third, and United States,
fourth.

Significantly, New Zealand also had the highest per-capita rate of
female entrepreneurship, and in the 25- to 34-year-old age group, women
entrepreneurs actually outnumbered men.

The global rankings in necessity entrepreneurship -- those who start
companies out of need because no other jobs are available -- were
somewhat different.

Here, India ranked No. 1, followed by Mexico, Brazil and South Korea.

Larry Cox, a researcher at the Kauffman Center, based in Kansas City,
Missouri, said the study distinguished between the two types of
entrepreneurs because opportunity-based ventures were thought to be more
economically important.

But the study, so far, had not shown that to be the case and additional
research was needed, he said.

The results were based on telephone surveys in each country augmented by
other in-depth interviews.