The 10th-floor Moray Place office of the late Howard Paterson looked northeast over the city and towards the University of Otago.
During an interview with this reporter, the businessman got up from his chair, walked to the window and pointed to the university, declaring the region's future prosperity lay in reports and research stacked on basement shelves or that were still in the heads of its academics and researchers.
He went on to commercialise several biotechnology products developed by university scientists before his untimely death, and while the university's science and medicine departments have had plenty of high-profile successes, those in the university's School of Business believe they can make a similar contribution.
Dr Graham McGregor, the director of business research at the university's School of Business, said the school would also contribute to the university's aim of developing a research-intensive university.
But, more than that, Dr McGregor wants to cement connections with local businesses, to work more closely and interact with the Otago business community.
Academic success has traditionally been judged in terms of researchers getting their work published in journals, but Dr McGregor believes new ways are needed to get that expertise publicised - what he calls a bottom-up system, with people from all aspects of business interacting.
While such relationships would take time to develop, Dr McGregor has a dream where research from the business school would be integrated with basic research and applied research done in the local business community.
But first he was getting his own house in order, engendering dialogue among researchers and academics within the business school, with the aim of exchanging ideas and sharing expertise.
That could be as simple as creating a dedicated space to encourage academics out of their offices, to sit and have a coffee and talk to one another.
"Without having a focal point, those opportunities happen in the building at department level but tend not to include cross-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary conversation," he said.
A visiting academic from the University of Florida, Dr Heather Gibson, said academics around the world were getting busier balancing teaching with research and community-based work, but they were also recognising the need for inter-departmental communication.
"The strongest research is based on collaboration within disciplines, but increasingly, interdisciplinary is the strongest programme for natural science and social science," Dr Gibson said.
Dr Andrea Insch, a senior lecturer in the school's department of marketing, said this approach had already returned dividends for her with the discovery of a fellow academic doing research relevant to her work.
Dr McGregor said the school regularly hosted academics from overseas, and he wanted to ensure that not only university academics, but also local business leaders, who might benefit were aware of visiting academics' areas of expertise.
The school is currently hosting academics from seven countries, and Dr Gibson has already benefited from this wider publicity of expertise.
Dr Gibson is an associate professor in the University of Florida's Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management and is spending a semester at the University of Otago.
Her research has focused on the benefits of sport to the health and wellbeing of people in later life, and her department has for three years followed the annual seven-day Bike Florida ride, which attracts hundreds of participants. The field of riders has an average age of 57.
This research has links with work Dr Mike Boyes, of Otago University's Department of Physical Education, has been doing on people aged over 60 who were regular trampers.
There was also a crossover with the next phase of Dr Gibson's research looking at the benefits to communities of holding one-off events with work on marketing of outdoor recreation going on at the business school.
Her initial research showed that while there was initial fear the local community would be overrun by tourists after the establishment of facilities such as rail trails, that soon subsided.
"By hosting amateur sporting events, you have got a great opportunity to benefit the community both economically and socially."
Those benefits could flow on simply by making sure businesses in a town were open and ready to cater for an influx of visitors.
Dr Gibson has ridden part of the Central Otago Rail Trail and believes it could attract fit but older international tourists looking for something new and challenging.
"Increasingly, we have got tourists who are interested in physical activity, so you could add value by targeting groups and giving them an experience."
Other initiatives Dr McGregor hoped would make the business school more open was to make research and academic papers available online and to devote a month to highlighting research occurring at the school.
While showcasing that work, the research month would alert others to the areas of inquiry being worked on.
Dr McGregor is passionate about the business school and what its staff have achieved, but more so about how they can help the region and ultimately the country prosper economically.
He said that all started with "having a conversation", but that conversation had to involve the whole community.
THE RESEARCH
Research happening at the University of Otago's School of Business.-
• Associate Prof John Knight: Genetically modified crops and country image of food exporting.
• Dr Anna Thompson and Dr Brent Lovelock: The use of recreational land in natural/conservation areas and the potential conflict between mining and the tourism and recreation sectors.
• Dr Richard Mitchell: Wine tourism.
• Dr Michael Falta: Inter-departmental initiative to form a complex systems analysis group modelling the seller-buyer relationship, with a view to measuring the cost of any goods, services or assets.
• Dr Holger Regenbrecht: Leading-edge virtual and augmented reality systems and their applications.
• Dr Alan Toy: Privacy law and legal issues in cyber space.
• Dr Sarah Walton: Sustainable development reporting.
> Published and working papers generated by the school are publicly available: http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/ or by googling Otago Eprints.
