C.D.C. believes future lies in knowledge

Press, 9 March 1988, Page 33

C.D.C. believes future lies in knowledge

The Canterbury Development Corporation has put in much of the ground-work in establishing the Canterbury Technology Park, and will be moving there as soon as its building, the Canterbury Development Centre, is finished. The Corporation was established because of the Christchurch City Council’s concern about worsening unemployment and the increasing northern drift in 1983. The council felt that it

must provide some sort of business initiative, and resolved to donate $500,000 to form the C.D.C. as an independent organisation to promote business development and. employment opportunities in the region. Mr Doug Kerr became its chief executive, and in January 1984 the C.D.C. was registered as a limited liability company with charitable status. Workingl on an extremely limited budget, the corporation began by i i

offering some of its capital as short-term bridging finance and producing some versatile promotional material, a brochure and a video, designed to lead into product videos for other businesses, backgrounding the Canterbury area for overseas customers.

Its philosophy developed as they gained more ! experience of the problems.

“We decided we would gain little trying to prevent companies imoving to their Auckland market or trying to rescue those who couldn’t compete from Canterbury,” said Mr Kerr. "Our task was to find and promote businesses that could operate and have a competitive advantage from a Canterbury location.” The corporation identified such businesses as informantics, robotics and other new technologies, bio-technologies and genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals and the twenty-first century edu-

cation industry. "Not only are these growth industries in the world market, but they are also industries that can gain advantage from a Canterbury location,” said Mr Kerr.

“For example we have two Universities and at least five research institutions with extremely high international reputations. Another resource is our culture and lifestyle, which are attractive when compared to the stresses of working in a big city.

"The C.D.C. decided to promote knowledge-based industries. We believe the potential for Canterbury is enormous.”

The Canterbury Development Centre in the park will provide the option to lease space without tying up capital, and offer its occupiers shared administration facilities.

It will allow people with more ideas than capital to take advantage of the commercial expertise and cash reserves of others to get a start in business.