Innovation a byproduct of working in New Zealand?

Sitting in a restaurant in Silicon Valley after a week in the UK visiting a number of large companies, I’ve been reflecting on why New Zealand companies are so innovative.

It struck me this trip how isolated staff in many global companies are. Most of the large technology companies I now visit are based in office parks. When companies have thousands of employees a campus is logical, desirable and makes economic sense. Employees in the US drive to their workplace and everything is there. Gym, childcare, meals. You never need to leave.

Quite often there is a substantial on-site restaurant facility. For very large companies there are separate coffee shops and even convenience stores.

In the UK many of these technology campuses are along the M4 corridor. Often you will train to the nearest station and as these campuses have been built on open land on the outskirt of villages there may be free bus shuttles out to the office park. I was on such a bus last week and watched the people immersed in their own books and iPods. Even though they were obviously from the same company they were not really talking.

In New Zealand we have few companies of scale, so the corporate campus is alien to us. It takes a bit to get your head around the scale. While very convenient I think New Zealanders find them strange and a bit suffocating; unless you’re at the top you’d feel very much like a cog in the machine.

If you are developing enterprise solutions, from your campus, then you would understand your customer. None of the global companies in our market have yet released a competitor to our small business accounting solution Xero. And I can’t help but think that it would be hard for people in a campus environment to understand how small businesses work and how personal they are. For example I was recently having a post-meeting lunch at Microsoft UK in Thames Valley Park, near Reading. My lunch tray was taken away on a conveyer belt – something you would not see in the majority of small business lunchrooms.

Living in a larger society subjects you to the inevitable problems of scale. Checking into an internal US flight this morning from LAX to San Jose I queued four times - twice for nearly 30 minutes. Over time being a cog must depersonalize you and begin to break your spirit. It must get harder to stand out and innovate.

I’m not saying that large companies don’t innovate. These companies are world class in building scalable global business. But perhaps our lack of scale in all facets of our lives makes us free-er thinkers and we can add value through innovation. It would be interesting to survey the number of new people we meet with each week. I suspect people in smaller companies, located in mixed areas, are influenced by many more people each week.

Facebook, which recently reached double the traffic of MySpace, has offices in downtown Palo Alto. Staff can stroll down to any number of cafés and do banking and shopping during the week. To what extent is being downtown and integrated part of their success?

Perhaps the flip side of our lack of scale is a freedom that encourages innovation. The inherent diversity we get in the way we work and live keeps us free thinking; unencumbered by the downsides of scale it is easier for us to respond to new ideas.

Our secret is that we can go from the beach to the boardroom and back in a couple of weeks. Maintaining and building relationships using the Internet we can play in both worlds. But you’ll have to get on a plane to appreciate that.