Imagination As A National Asset

Our healthcare system dropped from 17th to 21st in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation between 2022 and 2024. We rank 35th out of 41 for child well-being across EU and OECD countries. Dental care still costs thousands out of pocket. And a friend recently had to cancel a trip to Hamilton because the car rental company wouldn’t accept his digital driver’s licence (he’d lost his physical copy…).

Small moment. Big system. Same problem.

So what’s the deal here? What is the problem? Put simply, it is a lack of imagination.

We’re trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s thinking. We pour billions into maintaining complex, slow-moving systems, and then wonder why nothing really changes.

Many say it’s a capability crisis. We need to call it what it is; an imagination drought.

The reality is, that most of our systems still run on a fund-and-sustain model. We invest (through government, or business) in service delivery, renew contracts, shuffle departments, and call it transformation — but really, we’re mostly just trying to make old structures work a little better.

While stability has its place, it leaves very little room to build something new, and really, that’s the distinction: improvement versus imagination.

Improvement tweaks what’s there, while imagination opens the door to something different, and when you look across the systems we rely on — healthcare, housing, transport, education — it’s that kind of thinking we’ve been missing. Not because people don’t care, or don’t want to do better, but because the systems we work inside are designed to preserve what exists, not to explore what could be.

The result is the boldest ideas often come from outside the system. From people asking better questions, from communities designing for their own needs, or from entrepreneurs and social leaders who aren’t bound by the same internal logic, because they have imagination. They can imagine a difference that others can’t, and that’s what imagination gives us — not just better services, but better systems.

So how do we change this? How do we spark that creativity and build better?

It starts with government, that’s where the system sets its tone. Public services shape the experience of being a citizen, and when those services are simple, accessible, and well-designed, they raise the standard we all expect — not just from the public sector but from businesses, community organisations, and everywhere else.

That means treating services like products, not just policies. It means resourcing cross-functional teams who can design, test, and improve the way government actually shows up in people’s lives — whether that’s applying for a benefit, renewing a driver’s licence, or accessing healthcare.

But right now, that kind of work is often outsourced, undercooked, or blocked by risk-averse systems designed more for compliance than creativity, meaning the big, bold ideas tend to come from the outside.

Tend is a good example. With all the investment, infrastructure, and capability we have inside our health system, you’d think something like a digital-first primary care platform would’ve been built by the public sector. But it wasn’t. It came from private founders — not because it was their job, but because no one else was doing it. The system simply has no space for that kind of thinking.
Now, I’m not blaming the government for not building it, but it does point to a bigger pattern. When government can’t move fast enough, or hold the space for experimentation, it’s often business that needs to step in. Business has the capital, the speed, and the product thinking to deliver differently — and sometimes, that’s exactly what happens. But too often, especially in larger organisations, bold thinking gets crowded out by internal risk filters and short-term performance cycles.

Take for example, the supermarkets that optimise online delivery but don’t rethink the supply chain. The power companies that chase marginal efficiency while entire communities face energy hardship. The banks that talk inclusion but design for credit — not equity.

It’s not about being bad, it’s about being stuck, and this idea that imaginative ideas, or impactful design, often equal lower profits.

But the truth is, imagination doesn’t compete with profitability — it fuels it, and companies that ask better questions, that design for impact and growth, tend to find both.

‘What would it take for food to cost half as much, without hurting suppliers?’, ‘What would it look like to deliver power free at the point of use, while still running a sustainable energy market?’ These aren’t easy questions, but they’re the ones worth asking — and the businesses that do are the ones that stay relevant in a market where expectations are changing fast.

Then there’s the charity sector. New Zealand has one of the highest numbers of charities per capita in the world, and we rely on them far more than we admit. They’re running food banks, delivering mental health support, and filling critical service gaps. They are often the first to act, but the last to be funded properly.

St John runs our ambulance service as a charity, which means first responders are fundraising to keep ambulances on the road — and that’s not just wild, it’s quietly normalised. We wouldn’t fund a bank through a sausage sizzle, but for some reason, when it comes to the organisations carrying the weight of our social infrastructure, we’ve decided that goodwill will do.

Charities are asked to innovate without R&D, to scale without capability, and to keep delivering without knowing how — or if — they’ll be funded next year. And yet, many of them are sitting on exactly the kind of knowledge, trust, and experience we need. The ideas are already there — they’re just trapped inside systems that don’t allow them to grow.

Some are starting to break through. Beyond Blindness in South Australia recently sold a commercial property and used the proceeds to fund long-term sustainability. Other organisations are creating revenue-generating tools and platforms based on the insight they’ve built over decades — not because they’re pivoting away from their mission, but because they’re finally being supported to build on it.

That’s the shift we need. Not a sector-by-sector transformation, but a shared commitment to treating imagination as infrastructure — and giving every part of the system the tools to build with it, because these systems don’t sit neatly in their own lanes, they overlap and influence each other.

Right now, however, they’re more invested in preserving what exists than in imagining what could be.

So, what if we stopped treating New Zealand like a machine to maintain, and started thinking about it like a portfolio of ventures — something dynamic, evolving, and deliberately built?

In a good portfolio, not everything needs to succeed. You back different ideas at different stages for different reasons. Some scale, some serve a very specific community or moment, some fail — and teach you something valuable. The point isn’t perfection but deliberate experimentation.

Now, what if we applied that mindset to the country itself?

What if we backed imaginative ideas — from government, business, iwi, charities, councils, community leaders — with the kind of support that lets them grow, connect, and stick? Not just isolated pilots or siloed projects, but a coordinated portfolio that reflects the complexity of the country we’re trying to build.

We won’t be starting from scratch. We already have funding mechanisms, so what if we used them to support early-stage ventures — not just infrastructure projects, but new delivery models, new approaches to well-being, housing, employment, and education? What if we built the scaffolding for imagination — open data, flexible procurement, teams who know how to test and learn and adapt in the real world?

And if we built those systems, if we made imagination part of how we govern, how we invest, how we lead, then we’d stop tinkering around the edges, and we’d start designing the country we actually want to live in.

So, where does that leave us?

If we want a stronger, fairer, more resilient country — one that doesn’t just manage decline but actively designs progress — then we need to make space for imagination and treat it like an asset, a capability worth investing in. Not just in the arts, or in strategy decks, or in tech incubators, but at the centre of how we build.

That means funding differently, hiring differently, and measuring differently. It means backing ideas early and backing them properly, putting product thinkers inside government, giving charities the tools to scale., challenging boards and leadership teams to rethink where value comes from — and who it serves.

Imagination isn’t soft. It’s not indulgent. It’s what lets us build things that work — not just for the next quarter, but for the next generation.

In a world that’s moving fast, full of complexity and constraint, the countries that will thrive are the ones that know how to imagine — and how to build.

Let’s be one of them.