The Government Grant Problem That Dare Not Speak Its Name . . .

Foreign Listening Posts in New Zealand Collect News About Pending Products. An invisible by product of the state seeding of new product-line businesses with intermittent dollops of cash-grants- is rarely aired. The flaw is that the enterprise under incubation becomes addicted to the free cash and starts publicising its activities in order to receive more life sustaining injections.

These anguished calls for additional money often take the form of articles in the popular press and explain that the money is needed for just one more heave in order to precipitate the development into the markets of the world. That it will boost employment......the nation's industrial base, and so on.

For added emphasis the grants hopeful doing this public lobbying puts up their local Member of Parliament to ask a question during a Parliamentary session thus putting the demand on the official record which further excites the interest of the local press.

In New Zealand these appeals are eagerly picked up by a number of listening posts based in New Zealand of which the commercial departments of embassies are the best example. Public relations and marketing communication outfits with foreign clients are often also assigned to pick up information on pending new products in the same field as their clients'. These in turn are referred back to analysts in the home country. The technical coordinates of the venture are dissected.

If it is of any value, and especially if it does fill a market vacuum it will then be copied, and brought to market very rapidly and certainly well in advance of the commercialisation of the New Zealand product from which the idea was filched in the first place.

This process has been observed in the state fostering of pharmaceuticals especially. It has been commented upon by intellectual property – patent experts from the very countries which are taking advantage of these publicity-driven cash pleas.

They have advised those concerned only to publicise any product under development close to the time when it is ready to go to market, or has all its patents in place.

Even then, they have argued, publicity should be reserved for the technical or scientific press, in order to find licensees or distributors.