[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> June 11 2020 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: Visionweek NZ **Date**: June 11 2020 ![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlgW5Pc7bpo) 🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlgW5Pc7bpo ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Interviewer:** Peter, what is your vision for a post-COVID New Zealand? **Peter Beck:** Well, I think it's probably shared along with most New Zealanders - you know, a prosperous, high productivity, high wage, smart economy. I think if you can solve that, then everything else gets solved from top to bottom. **Interviewer:** So how do we get there? **Peter Beck:** That's not an easy thing. I mean, you know, historically if we pick on productivity for a moment, productivity has been historically very, very low. And it's not because we're not smart or we don't work hard. You know, Kiwis are some of the hardest-working people and smartest on the planet. It's just the fields that we've chosen to go and pursue lend themselves to those kind of outcomes. And you know, if you look at a huge number of the large companies in the high productivity areas, a lot of it is in tech and deep tech. I think that should be a strong focus as we try and leverage this crisis into something more prosperous for our future. ### Importance of Long-Term Vision **Interviewer:** As we enter this phase which is completely unprecedented for us as a nation, why is it important to have a long-term vision or strategy? **Peter Beck:** If you don't know where you're ultimately trying to get, then it's very easy to run around in circles. If you don't have something to ultimately shoot for and really be clear about, then it's hard to understand what everybody works for. It's no different than having a vision in a company - it's really, really important. So why not having a vision in a country is really, really important? At Rocket Lab, everybody knows we go to space to improve life on Earth, and everybody's very clear about their tasks and what they do and how that contributes to that ultimate vision. And I think probably as a country we need to do the same. ### Taking Advantage of the COVID Opportunity **Interviewer:** COVID-19 has really given us a chance to kind of pause, take a breath, sit and look at all facets of our lives. Why do you think it's so important that we take advantage of this opportunity? **Peter Beck:** I'm not sure it's so much of a pause because it's certainly a giant interruption which causes you to think, "Is this the way that we continually want to go?" And in some cases it will be, in other cases, you know, it's a good opportunity to think about going in a different direction. But I think it's important in something as major as this event to really take stock of where we are as a nation. The world has changed, how we fit into that changed world, and create a plan to go forward about how we think we can exploit the opportunities that are there in the new world. **Interviewer:** And if we don't sit back and think about some of those things, take stock as you talked about, what opportunities do you think could be lost? **Peter Beck:** Well, I think it would be very disappointing if we went back to the same old low productivity, low wage economy. And you know, sectors of our economy are under tremendous pressure right now, like tourism. So that's a real opportunity to think about - do we want very low-end campervans with people pulling in the bushes, or do we want to position ourselves as a country for a much higher-end clientele that can contribute much more wealth into the society? So those are the kind of things I think that it would be good to take stock of. I haven't even got the answers for that, by the way, and I'm not saying that we should stop the lower end of the market, but certainly there's an opportunity to build some infrastructure at least for the higher end of the market. ### Where New Zealand Needs to Improve **Interviewer:** So where do you think maybe we need to up our game a little? **Peter Beck:** The area that New Zealand, in my view, has always struggled with, especially from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is just thinking big enough - thinking, "Actually, we can take on the world, we can go after these really big projects and these really big problems." Resource them correctly with capital outside New Zealand, inside New Zealand, and build large global enterprises. That's where you can create a lot of value. If you take Rocket Lab for example, we started in New Zealand, we employ 500 Kiwis, and although headquarters is in America and we're a US company, the value that's created down here is enormous. And all the capital, or the majority of the capital, actually came from the venture capital community and overseas investment, but it would be hard to argue that it hasn't been tremendous value created. Not only the 500 high-paying jobs, high productivity, new sectors - it's all goodness. So I think we just need to be careful about ruling things out like overseas investment and being a lot more global in the way we think about solving these really big problems. But most importantly, not being afraid to go after the really big problems, because everybody else in the world is. If we sit back and don't have the boldness to go after these big opportunities, we'll remain a low productivity economy. ### The Role of Technology in New Zealand **Interviewer:** Now, more than Rocket Lab, you're at the forefront of technology and innovation. What role do you see technology playing in the country moving forward? **Peter Beck:** I think technology has a huge, huge role to play. You know, if you look at the businesses that generate tremendous wealth for their countries, they're tech or deep tech based. Look at Silicon Valley, for example. Although we might not agree with all of the companies that have been created there, there's no argument that those companies are a powerhouse for their economy. And New Zealanders are very good entrepreneurs. New Zealanders are very good at solving complex tech problems. We're less good at bringing those to the world market and commercializing them really effectively on a big scale. So I think that would be an area of opportunity that would be sad to be missed. It's almost a little bit of a paradox because right now, venture capital is almost non-existent. So in times of a crisis where you could argue that you really should be building new companies and really taking risks, there's a very limited venture capital market right now that would enable you to take those risks. But this is a speed bump, this is not a long-term situation. So those venture capital markets will return quickly, they have capital, they need to put it to work, and let's just make sure that New Zealand is ready there with their arms open, ready to accept that capital and those ideas can get funded. **Interviewer:** As a country, we kind of like to think that we're at the forefront of technology, but is that in fact the case? **Peter Beck:** Sometimes and sometimes not. It's funny, you know, I used to work for a government research lab, and there's a number of things in that lab that every year, year after year, I would hear that "we were world best technology, world best technology." And one day I just asked the question, "Well, if this is so good, then why isn't a big tech company coming and buying this whole team?" Because that's what happens when technology is super good. Sometimes we think our technology is better than in fact it is, but there's an equal number of times where our technology and our teams are in fact world-class, if not the best in the world. ### Space Infrastructure Priority **Interviewer:** Do things like heading into space become less of a priority now we're facing such big problems here on Earth? **Peter Beck:** I'd argue the opposite. You know, everybody's jumped on Zoom recently, and I'm not sure how many people looked at the sky while they're on Zoom thinking, "Ah, thank goodness for all those satellite communication networks so I can have my calls." So I think space infrastructure is more important than ever, and having a very inward looking, technology-defeating view is exactly the wrong thing to do. I would argue that the thing to do now is to think about those ideas, whether they're on the planet or off the planet, that have real opportunity to create value. ### Resilience **Peter Beck:** This kind of event, although it's horrific, it's still really good in some respects for people to understand that we live in a very dynamic world. It's very easy to sit there and think that the world is very static - it's not, it's hugely dynamic. And whether it be a natural disaster or something like a pandemic, the world throws stuff at you pretty frequently. So it's good for resilience, I think. And I look at my kids growing up, and I think, "Well, this is good if you had to live through something that's difficult." And you know, I think it's good human-shaping characteristics for them at least. ### New Zealand's Priorities **Interviewer:** If you could set a new course for New Zealand, what would your priorities be? **Peter Beck:** High productivity, high wage economy, deep tech, and incredibly smart businesses, and not being afraid to leverage international capital. **Interviewer:** If you could change one thing - this is a big question - if you could change one thing, what would it be? **Peter Beck:** The only thing I can think of is it's really cultural within the New Zealand psyche, and that is to think bigger and go after the really big problems. Sometimes I think Kiwis think they're a small island nation, small island minded, but they're not. And being bold enough to go out onto the world stage and do really big things - New Zealanders excel at that. I'm always surprised whenever I go around big corporations all around the world. You walk past a booth and there's a little Kiwi flag flying in someone's cubicle somewhere, and they're not the cleaners. You'll find that they are senior management, deep technical officers and things like that. So New Zealanders on the international stage are incredibly well recognized and renowned. So if we can do a bit more of that at home, I think that would be a great thing. ### Having a Vision **Interviewer:** Here's one that I think is particularly apt for you and your business, Peter. Can you think of a time where having a vision for your business means extraordinary things were achieved? **Peter Beck:** I'm a strong believer in having a vision for everything, including your business. When you have a vision, it doesn't really matter how large or unachievable the vision seems. Having a really clear vision that everything ties to is super important. When you are undertaking tasks and doing things that sometimes are not very much fun or really, really hard work, it's always good to be able to relate that back to why you're doing it in the first place. For us here at Rocket Lab, we believe we can have a really positive impact on a large portion of the population of this planet if we can reduce the cost of getting infrastructure and services in orbit. If you're someone down in the production floor building a rocket, and there's a customer satellite going on there - it's a weather satellite that is providing weather data to a whole lot of countries around the planet - it's very easy to draw the link between the work that you're doing and the vision. Having a vision is incredibly important, but having one that is very big is really important as well. But making sure that you pair that big vision with milestones along the way, so that you just don't spout off some vision which has no tangible path to getting there. It's making sure that there's a big vision but also clear objectives and a pathway to meeting that vision.