Two days into the job, Roman Reyhani was confronting a $231 million question: how does New Zealand turn clever science into businesses that deliver lasting value here?

The founding chief executive of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology joins this week’s episode of The Business of Tech to explain his approach.

The institute represents a pivot towards high-tech research and commercialisation. But its funding has largely been redirected from other parts of the science system, rather than added to the pot.

That increases the pressure to deliver. Can a stronger commercial focus succeed without weakening the research pipeline feeding it?

From genocide prosecutions to Silicon Valley startups 

Reyhani’s route to the role is unusually varied. Raised in Auckland, he began in international law, including an internship with the prosecution team at the United Nations tribunal investigating Rwanda’s genocide.

California offered a different way to make an impact. He established a legal practice and worked with technology startups, gradually moving beyond legal advice into strategy and business development.

Six years at Boston Consulting Group’s venture-building arm, now BCG X, followed. His teams helped major companies create products and businesses, recruiting people and taking technology to market rather than leaving clients with presentation slides.

Now back in New Zealand after more than two decades overseas, he wants the institute to bring an investor’s discipline to research funding.

“It’s not just here’s a chunk of money and a handshake and good luck to you,” he says.

Instead, funding would follow “stage gates” milestones with money shifted away from projects that aren’t progressing.

The institute’s territory sits between promising laboratory research and technologies mature enough to attract private investment. Bringing companies and investors alongside earlier could help bridge that expensive gap.

Applied AI is a big opportunity.

Then there’s the question of who benefits. Reyhani wants New Zealand to retain more value when taxpayer-backed technologies succeed, whether through financial returns, research facilities, skilled people or new businesses.

On artificial intelligence, he sees opportunities in applying existing models to New Zealand datasets, including agriculture and health, rather than competing head-on with the world’s biggest model developers.

It’s an ambitious brief for a modest budget by international standards. The challenge is choosing where New Zealand has a genuine edge, then backing it without confusing commercial discipline with impatience.

Listen to the full episode of The Business of Tech, streaming on iHeartRadio, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.