A smarter future: Improving Auckland’s global innovation standings

Some cities are renowned for their dynamism, their ability to attract talent, foster great ideas, and to draw investment. Examples include London, Barcelona, and Sydney, as well as innovation hubs like Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, and Berlin. These cities excel not by chance but through intentional design and planning.

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland aspires to join these ranks, not just for global recognition but for the sustainability of its economy and society. Despite having key assets, world class universities, a growing venture capital sector and world leading scientists, Auckland falls behind when compared to peer cities, including Brisbane, Fukuoka, and Helsinki, in knowledge and innovation as outlined in the 2024 State of the City report.

Why does lagging here matter? Innovation is crucial for creating sustainable wealth and prosperity.

Although Auckland has notable strengths, such as a strong FinTech sector, promising creative industries, and high rankings in AgriTech, the city faces fierce global competition. It needs to leverage its existing advantages to improve its global standing.

Auckland’s innovation and knowledge-driven progress

Auckland has some great innovation assets and enablers, including two world ranked universities, incubators and accelerators, and an active start up eco-system.

The city also has known and growing advantages across the FinTech, MedTech, software and creative industries, and is demonstrating promise in food, climate, and other sectors. Auckland has made it to the top 100 globally for software and data and its cloud industry is in the top 60 globally. This edge can lead to cross-sector opportunities and reinforces Auckland’s position in sectors where it already leads its peers, such as telecoms (1st) and security (3rd).

With a range of world-class gaming, film and creative software companies based in the city, Auckland’s share of tech-enabled companies in the creative industries is fourth highest among peers - ahead of Melbourne, Singapore, and Sydney, a factor which is key to driving economic growth, global competitiveness, and innovation in the ever-growing creative industries.

Auckland is first among peers for the share of its startups in the AgriTech and food tech sectors. It also has the opportunity to build on the competitiveness of both the University of Auckland and Massey University, which are each rated in the world’s top 100 for food science and technology.

Across several innovation metrics, Auckland has been edging up in recent years and is closer to the top 100. In 2024, Auckland climbed six places to 116th in the world for the maturity of its ecosystem, which reflects an improving track record of companies setting up and scaling. The total value of investable enterprises has surpassed 2-3 cities in the last year and is up on 2018, signalling efforts to convene the ecosystem and attract more funding have had some success.

Despite this progress, Auckland’s overall innovation scale is still much smaller than most peer cities. In some cases, Auckland is not viewed to have sufficient scale to be analysed independently as a city causing it to be overlooked by talent and investors. More established innovation economies usually have a larger base of startups and scale-ups, which shows the importance of large companies in the ecosystem encouraging entrepreneurship, becoming customers of start-ups’ products, and providing affordable space for co-location.

What are other cities doing better?

The State of the City report finds comparable cities, including Copenhagen and Dublin have taken a range of measures to improve global innovation standings such as having a unified vision and direction, funding, and programmes connecting skills and career pathways for young and disadvantaged people.

Enhanced collaboration at all levels including employers-to-employees, public-to-private sector organisations, business-to-business, academia-to-enterprise also underpin strong results across Auckland’s peer cities performing well on innovation metrics, as do durable internationalisation strategies for sector development, including R&D hub corridors and turnkey business investment.

What can Auckland do to shift the innovation dial?

There is no silver bullet to ensure Auckland is a more innovative place, but there is plenty the city can do to ensure it is a more magnetic and dynamic place.

• Strategic vision: Develop and promote a cohesive innovation strategy and approach championed by politicians from local and central government, as well as key industry leaders. This vision needs to be shared through press and campaigns to attract and retain funding and talent.
• International focus: Take a long-term view and actively work to strengthen international connections and partnerships through investing in key relationships, sharing stories, championing ongoing relationships and development with targeted cities globally.

Local talent development

• Talent attraction: Create conditions for talent to thrive and relocate through deliberate programmes that are based on a laser focus on why people come and live in cities.
• Coordination: Improve coordination across key sectors to boost innovation and upskill Kiwi businesses and talent to build the capabilities required for long term innovation progress.

Deloitte works with leading businesses, government agencies, civil society organisations and local government entities on their challenges and is helping those who want to be part of delivering services in a new way to thrive. As a firm, we see this as part of our contribution to improving Auckland’s ranking and the state of our city.

Get in touch to discuss the practical steps you and your organisation can take to contribute to Auckland and help ensure it is an innovative city that thrives.