Incentivizing Research and Development Through Entrepreneurship in New Zealand: Politics to the Fore

ABSTRACT

New Zealand has a reputation for being a nation reliant on the economic contributions of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as renowned for its creativity and use of its geographical advantage. This positive image needs to be tempered by the country's failure to reach its full potential through embracing widespread entrepreneurship. Much of this suboptimal achievement can be attributed to the below OECD-average investment in research and development (R&D) activities and a fledgling venture capital (VC) market. Fiscal investment by the public and private sectors has been low, notwithstanding an increasingly number of government initiatives. The lack of certainty for businesses has been exacerbated by politics, evidenced by numerous changes to R&D-related legislation. The evidence until early 2020 indicated steady improvement in investment until the untimely impact of COVID-19. As of late 2021, the level of investment is mixed in part reflecting the impact of COVID-19. This chapter seeks to provide an overview of New Zealand's (NZ's) efforts to encourage entrepreneurship through incentivising R&D activities and other fiscal-related measures. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.