This essay offers reflective learning on how researchers in the Western science tradition connect to bodies of knowledge created and held outside that tradition. It begins with endogenous growth theory, which explains the unique role of knowledge as an input into economic production. The essay describes how Western science addresses the problem of validating and accessing knowledge, by hosting an expanding corpus of peer-reviewed publications. This academic knowledge does not contain all current knowledge. The essay therefore draws on the authors’ experience in four large research programmes to consider business knowledge and mātauranga Māori. It reflects on agency, tikanga [right behaviour], global conversations about Indigenous knowledge, and decolonising research. The essay finishes with models of knowledge engagement in the interface between western Science and mātauranga Māori that support the mana and integrity of diverse knowledge streams.

Introduction

The Royal Society Te Apārangi ‘has a long and distinguished history of promoting knowledge, in particular of science’ (Martin 2017, p. xii). These opening words of the Society’s official history are well chosen. While knowledge produced by Western science has been its particular focus, the Society actively promotes other ways of exploring, discovering and sharing knowledge. Good examples are its commitments to engage with the wider innovation community and to partner with Māori research communities to enhance mātauranga Māori (Royal Society Te Apārangi 2018; Theodore et al. 2019; Ruckstuhl et al. 2019). This leads to an important question that this essay explores: how do researchers in the Western science tradition connect to bodies of knowledge created and held outside that tradition?

One influential answer to that question has assumed all knowledge should be integrated into Western science. Following colonisation, for example, the imported technology of writing on paper disrupted Māori ways of holding mātauranga, which allowed Western scientists to privilege their own interpretations in the science literature (Binney 1987; Ballantyne 2011; Smith 2012). Thus, ethnography has been highly honoured for more than a century (Sissons 1993), while Indigenous studies emerged as a canonical field only very recently (Ka’ai 2008; Hokowhitu 2010; Makereti 2020; Commonwealth of Australia and New Zealand 2020). There remain strong pressures towards integration. Academics are rewarded for publishing in science journals (Ruckstuhl et al. 2021) and Indigenous knowledge continues to be treated as a source of insights that Western scientists can use for general benefit (Diamond 2012). The government’s Vision Mātauranga policy (MoRST 2005) was a purposeful shift to a more positive and aspirational approach than the previous vacuum (Martin and Hazel 2020); nevertheless, its mission to unlock the innovation potential of Māori knowledge, resources and people can be used to support the commodification and globalisation of mātauranga held by Māori communities (Muru-Lanning 2012, 2021; Stewart 2022). Indeed, pursuit of private benefit has led to practices where ‘traditional knowledge is merely taken and packaged into a patentable invention’ (Reid 2009, p. 78), despite ongoing efforts to protect Indigenous property rights (Williams et al. 2011a, 2011b; Hudson et al. 2021; Mahuta 2022).

Tā Mason Durie (2004, 2005a) introduced an alternative approach, based on the concept of an interface between mātauranga Māori and Western science. This approach is also influential. The Vision Mātauranga policy document, for example, mentioned ‘interface’ 12 times and the concept is widely valued as an analytical frame; see Martin and Hazel (2020), Ruwhiu and Amoamo (2021), Ruckstuhl et al. (2021) and the 26 essays in Ruru and Nikora (2021a). In this journal, several articles have explored Durie’s interface, drawing on mātauranga Māori as a knowledge system with its own mana and integrity, including Broughton and McBreen (2015), Hikuroa (2017), Macfarlane and Macfarlane (2019), Williams (2019), Dobson-Waitere et al. (2021), Stewart (2022) and Edwards et al. (2023). This essay offers further reflections on Durie’s interface approach, based on the authors’ experience in leadership roles of four research programmes funded between 2013 and 2022 to create and deliver new knowledge on capturing greater value for food and fibre exports from Aotearoa New Zealand (Tait et al. 2016; Reid and Rout 2016a; Dalziel et al. 2018b: Saunders 2019; Saunders et al. 2021; Tait et al. 2023).

The Māori economy holds substantial investments in the natural resource sectors (Nana et al. 2021); hence, the programmes included partnerships with enterprises founded by Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Huirapa Rūnaka ki Puketeraki, Wakatū Incorporation, Tūhoe Tuawhenua and the shareholders of Miraka. Other partners in the research were Fonterra, Synlait Milk, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, Taupō Beef & Lamb, Zespri Kiwifruit, Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, the Foundation for Arable Research and the Kelliher Charitable Trust. Thus, the research team operated for a decade in interfaces with partners holding business knowledge and mātauranga Māori. Blundo-Canto et al. (2019) recommend that researchers engage in ‘reflective learning’ on programmes of this nature to sustain a culture of research impact (in the sense used by MBIE 2019) and to bring research closer to societal needs. This essay follows that advice, focusing on what our science team learned about engaging with knowledge holders outside the academy.

Economics has paid attention to knowledge at least since Hayek (1937). The first section draws on modern-day endogenous growth theory to explain how knowledge creation and utilisation can make unique contributions to expanding capabilities for wellbeing, followed by a section describing how Western science addresses problems of validating and accessing knowledge, through hosting an expanding corpus of peer-reviewed publications. We label this corpus as academic knowledge. Two sections then introduce two other types of knowledge that featured in our research programmes: business knowledge and mātauranga Māori. The essay offers reflective learning on our engagement with these knowledge types, focusing on agency, tikanga [right behaviour] and global conversations about Indigenous knowledge, with a separate section on the existing process of decolonising research. The final section returns to differences between the integration approach and the interface approach for engagement between Western science and other knowledge systems. Our experience supports the interface approach and the section provides models of knowledge engagement in the interface that support the mana and integrity of diverse knowledge streams. The essay finishes with a brief conclusion.

Insights of endogenous growth theory

Economics is concerned with expanding capabilities for wellbeing. To illustrate, the opening sentence of the founding textbook of neoclassical economics states that economics ‘examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of well-being’ (Marshall 1920, p. 1). Solow (1956) advanced that mission through his neoclassical growth model, which demonstrates that growth in per capita production depends solely on technological progress. Solow did not explore what contributes to that progress and so technology remained an exogenous variable in his model.

Romer (1986, 1990) filled that gap, giving rise to endogenous growth theory. His theory demonstrates that mathematical properties of knowledge as an input into production mean knowledge has a unique ability to sustain growth in living standards (Jones 2019). Romer conceptualised knowledge as ‘designs’ or ‘ideas’ that increase worker capabilities. The people who specialise in discovering these new designs are not available for producing economic output; hence technological progress has an economic cost, an important idea absent from Solow’s model.

Endogenous growth theory has powerful implications for policy (Blakeley et al. 2005; Dalziel et al. 2018a, chapter 7). Marshall’s (1920) project was to understand how to increase the material requisites of wellbeing. Romer demonstrates that knowledge – which is immaterial – is the only factor able to sustain output growth per worker. New knowledge can also result in harm to wellbeing. Dalziel (2019), for example, commented on the research that produced the atomic bomb, used in August 1945 to kill tens of thousands of people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Marsden similarly recalled the reaction of one of his elders who asked if the scientists who had managed to rend the fabric of the universe in this way knew how to sew it back together again, adding that politicians will always abuse such ‘tapu’ knowledge (Marsden and Henare 1992). This essay does not explore that reality further; nor does it address issues of what might be termed false knowledge; see, for example, the nuanced reflections of Ngāi Tahu scholars, Tau (2001a) and Stevens (2015). Instead, we follow Jones (2019) in recognising that Romer’s model leads to specific insights on how knowledge can contribute positively to expanding human wellbeing.

First, the endogenous growth model explains why recognising knowledge as an input into economic production is vital for understanding growth in living standards. Knowledge is ‘non-rival in consumption’, since a person using knowledge does not prevent others from using the same knowledge at the same time for different purposes (Stiglitz 1999). Hence, a doubling of other inputs (labour and physical capital, for example) can double output without any increase in the knowledge input. This exhibits the mathematical property of increasing returns to scale, which is a necessary condition for achieving ongoing productivity growth (Young 1928; Romer 1986; Krugman 1991).

Second, Romer’s model addresses the issue of incentives for entrepreneurs to invest in the costly activity needed to discover and develop new ideas. For perfectly competitive firms, the price of output exactly equals the average cost of production, which leaves no financial surplus to fund a search for new knowledge. Further, in the absence of intellectual property laws or some other departure from pure competition, a firm that invests in developing a new idea cannot prevent competitors from copying the idea for a fraction of the cost. Thus, models of market innovation typically require some form of monopolistic competition (Arrow 2000), perhaps fostered by public policy.

Third, researchers create novel ideas using the stock of existing knowledge. Hence, a discovery expands opportunities for further discoveries. Competitive markets do not reward knowledge workers for this positive externality, which provides a further rationale for public policy to support science and innovation. This insight also points to the benefits of ensuring that knowledge workers access what Grayling (2021) calls the frontiers of knowledge, in order to reduce wasted research effort. The following section discusses this point further.

Academic knowledge

Popper (1983, p. xxxv) commented that ‘the special thing about human knowledge is that it may be formulated in language, in propositions [which] makes it possible for knowledge to become conscious and to be objectively criticisable by arguments and by tests’, which is how ‘we arrive at science’. Popper’s description is consistent with observations that ‘Māori have always been scientists’ (Matamua 2021, p. 191) and that it is more helpful to think of the connection between mātauranga and the philosophy of science (Stewart 2022). We therefore follow the example of Martin and Hazel (2020) and IPCC (2022) in using ‘Western science’ (rather than the generic word ‘science’) to label the system that emerged in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth century for producing and disseminating what Grayling (2021, p. 9) carefully calls ‘highly credible and well-supported beliefs that we informally call ‘knowledge’’. This production is now a global activity carried out by researchers of diverse cultures around the world (Royal Society 2014; Larner 2019; Theodore et al. 2019), which places high demands on collaboration and knowledge exchange. Consequently, Western science has adopted norms and protocols to build trust and confidence (Dalziel et al. 2018a).

Following Popper (1959), Kuhn (1962) and Lakatos (1970), this practice can be summarised as follows. Communities of researchers make progress through formulating and testing propositions within science programmes that accept a hard core of theories as irrefutable, at least for the time being. A paradigm shift occurs when a research community accepts evidence that an alternative way of framing their science appears more promising. Researchers publish their results after peer review to confirm, among other things, that the manuscript cites previous publications relevant to its research question (acknowledging the ways in which this process has held back Indigenous scholarship; see Movono et al. 2021). This practice ensures knowledge builds on the frontiers of existing knowledge and develops an integrated body of expanding scientific knowledge. The Web of Science Core Collection, for example, has tracked well over one billion cited references in a curated collection of more than 18,000 peer-reviewed, high-quality scholarly journals going back to 1900 (Dalziel et al. 2018a, p. 156).

The aggregate collection of published research can be labelled as academic knowledge; that is, knowledge produced by and for the academy. presents a conceptualisation. AK represents the current stock of academic knowledge. Researchers use this knowledge to create further academic knowledge (the horizontal arrow moving from left to right). The figure assumes the new knowledge is proportional to the size of current knowledge (Romer 1990; Jones 2019). This feeds back into the next period’s stock of academic knowledge (the bottom arrow moving from right to left), expanding opportunities for further research and development.

It is not difficult to recognise outstanding scientists working in this tradition who have advanced the frontiers of academic knowledge. The Academy has also found room for researchers whose aspiration is to impact directly on the wellbeing of identified communities. An exemplar from Aotearoa New Zealand is Distinguished Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, elected as he Ahurei a Te Apārangi (Fellow of the Royal Society) in 2016. Smith explains her motivations in the foreword to the second edition of her influential text (Smith 2012, p. xi):

Smith addresses scholars, but aims also to develop meaningful and useful research for her communities. The relationship with communities moves in both directions, as Smith (2021a, p. xv) explains: ‘I, in turn, celebrate all Indigenous Peoples and communities who have shared with me their stories and knowledge that have been core to my life and work over the past two decades’. The two elements highlighted by Smith – delivering knowledge that is meaningful and helpful to communities outside the academy and drawing respectfully on the knowledge held in those communities – have implications for the application of endogenous growth theory by Western scientists. The remainder of this essay reflects on those implications.

Business knowledge

Endogenous growth theory explains how creating new knowledge from existing knowledge can expand capabilities for wellbeing. The depiction in is incomplete, however, since not all knowledge is published as academic knowledge. Thus, the boundary of academic knowledge in the figure does not represent the frontier of all knowledge, since it does not incorporate knowledge held outside the academy. This leads to the possibility that researchers can increase their knowledge and impact by engaging with knowledge holders outside the scientific community.

An important example is business knowledge held by commercial enterprises. A world authority on this subject is Professor David Teece (Grimes 2016), elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2023. Teece (1982, 2017, 2019) created the capability theory of the firm, which explains why business knowledge is a key element of commercial success; see also Haskel and Westlake (2017). Teece’s theory highlights three dynamic capabilities that drive a firm’s entrepreneurial innovation: sensing, seizing and transforming. Sensing is the capability to identify, develop, co-develop and assess technological opportunities in relationship to consumer needs. Seizing is the capability to mobilise resources to capture value from addressing these opportunities and needs. Transforming is the capability for continued renewal of the firm and the industry in which it operates. The dynamic capabilities and their associated business knowledge create commercial value (Teece 2017, pp. 698–699):

Like Smith, Teece recognises a two-way relationship between holders of academic knowledge and holders of business knowledge. His publications draw on case studies with business leaders, and he engages in ‘translational research’ to provide business executives with access to academic knowledge (quoted in Eckhardt 2018, p. 7):

Mātauranga Māori

Māori enterprises have distinctive characteristics and opportunities (Spiller et al. 2011; Reid and Rout 2016b, 2018; Mika et al. 2019, 2022b; Haar 2020; Rout et al. 2020; Vunibola et al. 2021; Dell et al. 2022). Māori entrepreneurship can be understood as ‘a differentiated form of entrepreneurship shaped by kaupapa Māori’ (Awatere et al. 2017, p. 81; Spiller and Stockdale 2013; Mika et al. 2019). Crucial to this is mātauranga Māori, which Tau (2001b, pp. 67–68) describes as ‘simply the epistemology of Māori – what it is that underpins and gives point and meaning to Māori knowledge’. Thus, mātauranga Māori is ‘a source of limitless creativity’ for Māori entrepreneurs and tribal practitioners (McMeeking 2021, p. 115). Citing Solomon (2005), Durie (2005b, p. 303) states that mātauranga Māori ‘recognizes the interrelatedness of all things, draws on observations from the natural environment, and is imbued with a life force (mauri) and a spirituality (tapu)’. This is consistent with global Indigenous knowledge as ‘a system of knowledge that integrates indigenous worldviews, values, and experience, and generates a framework for a distinctive environmental ethic’ (ibid; see also Viergever 1999).

Mātauranga is held by particular communities in particular places, where it remains connected to ‘the people who grew, applied, tested, reworked, recorded, shared and own that knowledge’ (Mercier 2020, p. 72). Consequently, some authorities suggest that the generic reference to ‘mātauranga Māori’ can be problematic (Matamua 2021). McDonald (2021) offers phrases such as ‘mātauranga ā-hapū’ and ‘mātauranga ā-iwi’, while Mahuika (2021, p. 151) refers to ‘te mātauranga-a-Ngāti Porou’. Whānau are important for holding and passing on mātauranga (Tau 2020; Jackson 2021; Kukutai 2021; Pitama 2021; Watene 2021; Kitson 2021). Māori express mātauranga in diverse ways, including through material art and kōrero tuku ihi or oral traditions (Mahuika 2012; Ruru and Nikora 2021b).

Mātauranga is a taonga [treasure] covered by Article 2 of te Tiriti o Waitangi (Martin and Hazel 2020), which is clear on who exercises authority. The following is the Māori text, with the English translation provided by Professor Sir Hugh Kawharu (both from https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/treaty-of-waitangi/).

Agency, tikanga and indigenous knowledge

The first lesson from our programmes emphasises the agency of research partners. It is standard ethical practice, of course, for researchers to ‘safeguard the health, safety, wellbeing, rights and interests of people involved in or affected during the conduct of their activities’ (Royal Society Te Apārangi 2019, p. 4). This lesson involves a further step that requires researchers to understand and respect that partners create business knowledge and mātauranga Māori for their own purposes. Business knowledge, for example, is costly to create and has commercial value. Hence, enterprises may be cautious about sharing their knowledge with researchers, or may be unwilling to fund research for new knowledge that will become freely available to competitors through academic publication. In two of our case studies, Lincoln University acknowledged this by signing non-disclosure agreements requiring the research team to hold in confidence any provided knowledge that a partner identified as commercially sensitive. Although not applicable in our own studies, a research team may also agree that new knowledge discovered in a project will not be published until partners (including the university) can consider whether the knowledge should be protected as intellectual property.

Similarly, the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga in te Tiriti o Waitangi requires Crown-funded researchers to respect the chieftainship exercised by holders of mātauranga Māori (Broughton and McBreen 2015). A community may choose to have aspects of its mātauranga transmitted into the stock of academic knowledge; an example is the article by Dobson-Waitere et al. (2021) that publishes mātauranga on a Ngāi Tahu taonga species. In our experience, however, there can be no general presumption that Māori partners will choose to place their mātauranga in the public domain (Muru-Lanning 2021). Like business knowledge, a process for guaranteeing tino rangatiratanga may be formalised in a written memorandum of understanding (Timoti et al. 2017).

Arrangements like these can be in tension with the ethical obligation for researchers to ‘support the public interest by making the results and findings of their activities available as soon as it is appropriate to do so’ (Royal Society Te Apārangi 2019, p. 4). Determining the ‘appropriate’ balance between creating public knowledge and expanding private knowledge requires judgement by all the research partners, mindful of wider public interest norms reflected in documents such as te Tiriti o Waitangi and in intellectual property law.

A second key lesson is that mātauranga Māori is closely connected to tikanga, or the right way of doing things according to Māori custom (Mead 2016). Hence, a science team should learn and respect the relevant tikanga of its Māori partners. To illustrate, Martin and Hazel (2020) record that research teams have an obligation to ensure their work genuinely contributes to creating community benefits for Māori partners. This aspect of tikanga recognises that ‘attainment of mātauranga-driven objectives and aspirations does not occur in isolation from our collective responsibility to the well-being of our community’ (Durie 2021, p. 30).

Further, epistemological and methodological insights derived from mātauranga Māori provide ethical parameters for the use and critical combining of knowledge drawn from different systems. This has implications for applications of endogenous growth theory and of the capability theory of the firm, particularly regarding how Indigenous knowledge is brought into firms to create commercial value, or is utilised across society to raise living standards. Sharing and incorporating Indigenous knowledge into economically productive activities must lead to benefits for Indigenous communities, while also shaping how firms and the broader economy operate as communities of workers guided by relational values (Wilson 2008; Spiller et al. 2011).

A third key lesson is that collaborations with Māori partners take place against a background of global conversations about Indigenous knowledge within a global knowledge system (Durie 2005b). Begun by Indigenous communities during colonisation, these conversations are now growing in the academic literature; see, for example, Semali and Kincheloe (1999), Denzin et al. (2008), Ford et al. (2016), Whyte et al. (2016), Nakashima et al. (2018), Smith (2018), Shava (2020), Thornton and Bhagwat (2020), Lovo et al. (2021), MacLeod (2021) and Jessen et al. (2022). Local scholars such as Distinguished Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith are leaders in this literature. Denzin et al. (2008, p. xiii) write that Smith’s ‘insights, understandings, and grasp of the field of indigenous scholarship, in its multiple discourses, are unparalleled’. Tuck (2013, pp. 366–367) describes Decolonizing methodologies (Smith 1999, 2012, 2021b) as ‘timeless’ and ‘profoundly influential’. Our own experience is that collaboration in the interface between Western science and mātauranga Māori is enhanced if researchers are able to engage with Māori partners on issues analysed by Smith and others on the process of decolonising research.

Decolonising research

Smith (2012) begins her analysis by observing that imperialism frames the Indigenous experience. In this journal, Barnes and McCreanor (2019) have described colonisation’s profound consequences for health and wellbeing outcomes of Māori populations over seven or more generations. Citing Reid et al. (2014), they observe how historical trauma is transmitted across generations as a result of fundamental societal-level structural changes created by colonisation, particularly ‘the loss of economic and political power and the loss of culture and traditional ways of life wrought by the loss of land’ (Barnes and McCreanor 2019, p. 526; see also Waretini-Karena 2017). Jackson (2020, p. 133) states, ‘in the simplest sense colonisation is the violent denial of the right of Indigenous peoples to continue governing themselves in their own lands’; see also Ross (2020).

Foundational to colonisation has been the overpowering use of the machinery of government to dispossess Indigenous peoples of lands and natural resources, in order to create and transfer property rights to settlers. Aotearoa New Zealand is no exception (O’Malley 2019, 2021), despite a long history of Indigenous environmental defenders that continues to the present day (Mika et al. 2022a). Reflecting on that experience, Smith (2012, p. 1) writes, ‘The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonized peoples’. Western scientists reaching out to partner with Indigenous communities cannot ignore those remembered histories. As the title of Smith’s book indicates, Māori are engaged in a process of decolonising research. Te reo Māori is preeminent in this process (Mercier 2020), as Matamua (2018, p. 5) exemplifies:

O’Malley and Kidman (2017) observe that many Pākehā New Zealanders find honest reappraisals of the realities of settler colonialism deeply troubling, but those realities raise unavoidable questions for researchers in tertiary education institutions. Given each university’s settlement history, Royal (2022, p. 57) asks ‘is it possible to decolonise a university’ and ‘to what degree can mātauranga Māori find expression in that university and at a fundamental level’. Simmonds (2021) asks similar questions. To illustrate, Lincoln University opened as a School of Agriculture on 19 July 1880. The first Director published an article that year, setting out his purpose, ‘I take it that the aim of the Agricultural School is … to train those sons of colonists who are intended to follow the calling of the farmer’ (Ivey 1880, p. 276). The official history on the 75th anniversary reproduced the passage without any objection to its racism and sexism, commenting instead that Ivey’s viewpoint ‘has stood the test of time and can be reiterated in 1955 in respect to the years that lie ahead’ (Blair 1956, p. 21). Given those deep colonial foundations, and given the violent dispossession of Māori land during colonisation, Royal’s questions are a just and urgent challenge for academics at New Zealand’s specialist land-based university.

Some scholars use the lens of ‘whiteness’ to explore how historical legacies and unexamined racial biases support ongoing disadvantage in postcolonial and other societies (Ballara 1986; Moreton-Robinson 2004; Arday and Mirza 2018; Feagin 2020; Stewart 2020). We also acknowledge Indigenous critiques of structuring the analysis of colonial relations in this way; important contributors include Said (1978), Bhabha (1983, 1994), Nandy (1988) and Hogan (2000). Such scholars view this style of analysis as an internalisation and inversion of destructive and racist colonial binaries within Indigenous communities that lead to psychosocial identity conflicts, and in turn suffering, within the Indigenous communities themselves. Nevertheless, it is clear that social norms can privilege a dominant cultural group and foster institutional racism (Rangihau 1988; Coates 2015; Eddo-Lodge 2017). Indeed, Ruru (2021, p. 17) observes that ‘tertiary institutions for the most part have been a hostile place for Indigenous students and staff’. Kidman (2020) draws on interviews with Māori senior academics completed in a wider study (Kidman and Chu 2017) to record their experiences of high levels of cultural marginalisation in New Zealand universities and also their concerns about assimilation pressures faced by early career colleagues. McAllister et al. (2020b, 2022) report similar issues for Māori and Pasifika scientists, while McAllister et al. (2020a) identify and measure significant gaps in academic salaries.

Engagement in the interface

The introduction to this essay described ongoing pressures towards integration of mātauranga Māori and Western science. As Williams (2019) observes, integration was the key theme in the Hunn (1960) Report, which became the basis for public policies that ‘remained assimilative in all but name’ (citing Hill 2009, p. 93). We similarly recognise that attempting to integrate mātauranga Māori into Western science transfers tino rangatiratanga from Māori communities to the science community deciding what it chooses to publish (Durie 2005b; Smith et al. 2016; Mika and Stewart 2017; Burgess et al. 2021). Hepi et al. (2018, p. 497) address this point in the context of environmental issues in the Kaipara Harbour, arguing that the challenge is not ‘how to integrate indigenous knowledge into resource management’ but ‘how to integrate indigenous knowledge holders into planning and decision-making’.

Pressure to integrate mātauranga Māori and Western science can support a second wave of colonisation. In the first wave, settlers took control of the land, reducing 26.7 million hectares of land in Māori title in 1840 to 1.3 million hectares by 1975 (Asher and Naulls 1987). A second wave occurs when settlers seek access to the mātauranga Māori connected to the dispossessed land, again for the benefit of the settler economy (Mika 2012; Muru-Lanning 2021). Recognition of this possibility is a reason for our programmes' emphasis on respecting tino rangatiratanga in engagements with mātauranga holders.

Tino rangatiratanga recognises that mātauranga Māori is valid in its own right (Hikuroa 2017) with its own ‘distinctly theoretical terrain that is Māori initiated, defined, and controlled’ (Pihama et al. 2002, p. 33). As Tā Mason Durie (2005b) advised, the tools of one body of knowledge should not be used to analyse the foundations of a different knowledge system. Tā Tipene O’Regan (2014, p. 64) similarly observed, ‘The tool of rigour may be a chisel made of steel, or it may be a chisel made of pounamu – they are handled differently, but they have, properly handled, comparable results.’ Relevant to our research, Awatere (2021) warns of risks associated with applying economic modelling techniques in the context of mātauranga Māori. Māori communities have wānanga processes guided by tikanga for testing validity (Durie 2021). An example is Te Hihiri, which is ‘an Indigenous Māori research paradigm that is underpinned by the cosmological whakapapa and describes knowledge creation as a relationship with experience’ (Nicholson 2020, p. 133). The energy of wānanga is an essential element in that process.

Inspired by Durie (2005a, 2011), Macfarlane et al. (2015) developed a model of interface engagement called he awa whiria, or braided river. In this model, Indigenous and Western knowledge streams flow alongside each other, each with its own mana and integrity, but interacting from time to time (see also Arago-Kemp and Hong 2018; Macfarlane and Macfarlane 2019; and Wilkinson et al. 2020). Scobie et al. (2021, p. 857) use he awa whiria to represent ‘a plurality of knowledge streams that can start from different sources, converge, braid and depart again, from the mountains to the sea’. Hikuroa (2021, p. 145) suggests another metaphor based on weaving discrete threads, in which ‘the integrity of each tira [individual strand] is maintained and, ideally, the finished piece has mana and mauri greater than the individual strands before they were woven together’.

Similar ideas are expressed in the Western science literature using the metaphor of a ‘triple helix’ (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Etzkowitz and Zhou 2018; Cai and Etzkowitz 2020; Compagnucci and Spigarelli 2020). This encourages researchers to collaborate with private and public sector organisations to share and co-create knowledge that advances wellbeing opportunities identified among all the partners. Some versions add knowledge held by civil society organisations, leading to a ‘quadruple helix’ (Roman et al. 2020). Another term is ‘Mode 2 knowledge production’ (Gibbons et al. 1994), which Amoamo and Ruckstuhl (2021) identify as embedded in the foundational Vision Mātauranga document (MoRST 2005).

illustrates how adopting the approach reflected in these models can expand opportunities compared to the simple model of academic knowledge in . Focusing on the partnership types discussed in this essay, adds circles for business knowledge and for mātauranga Māori. The three circles overlap to create interfaces; some business knowledge is published as academic knowledge, for example. Academic studies on ideas important for business knowledge and for mātauranga Māori are found in the interface where all three circles meet, which is an important field in its own right (Mika et al. 2022b). illustrates that researchers collaborating with holders of business knowledge and mātauranga Māori can access a greater stock of knowledge. This means a greater amount of new knowledge can be created. Further, contrary to the integration approach, not all new knowledge needs to be published as academic knowledge to have impact. The research partners can increase their own business knowledge and mātauranga Māori, both through knowledge transfer from the research team and as a result of the partners’ own engagements with the research questions during the programme (see, for example, Tahi 2022).

Conclusion

The sections of this essay have offered seven key points. First, endogenous growth theory explains how the discovery of new knowledge is uniquely important for wellbeing, because knowledge is the only input into economic production that is non-rival in consumption. Second, the norms and protocols created in Western science to build confidence in the accumulating stock of academic knowledge perform a vital role in sustaining this contribution to wellbeing. Third, business knowledge is a key element of commercial success, underpinning dynamic capabilities that drive innovation. Fourth, mātauranga Māori is a taonga for Māori enterprise, protected by the guarantee of tino rangatiratanga in Article 2 of te Tiriti o Waitangi. Fifth, Western science teams who engage with holders of knowledge outside the academy need to understand and respect the agency, tikanga and global context of their research partners. Sixth, Western scientists reaching out to partner with holders of mātauranga Māori cannot ignore the remembered histories of colonisation and the ongoing process of decolonising research. Seventh, research in the interfaces between Western science and other bodies of knowledge can amplify the wellbeing impact of researchers, but requires respect for the mana and integrity of each knowledge stream.

This essay has focused on three knowledge streams: academic knowledge produced by Western science; business knowledge held by private enterprises; and mātauranga Māori held by Māori organisations and communities. Business knowledge is the oldest stream; human enterprises have been creating knowledge on food and fibre production since the discovery of agriculture more than 11,000 years ago (Weisdorf 2005; Price and Bar-Yosef 2011). Capabilities for discovering and sharing new knowledge expanded with the development of Western science, which Grayling (2021) traces back to publications in 1543 by Copernicus and Vesalius. Some 200–300 years earlier, Māori ancestors in the thirteenth century created the mātauranga needed to voyage across the Pacific to these islands (Matisoo-Smith 2012; Anderson et al. 2014), thus completing what Matisoo-Smith and Daugherty (2012) describe as the longest journey from Africa to Aotearoa. Researchers working in this country today are able to draw on these sources to explore an interface ‘teeming with possibilities’ (Spiller 2021, p. 178). This has been our own experience.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank five referees who provided thoughtful and insightful reports on two earlier drafts; their sharing of their knowledge and mātauranga has led to considerable improvements. We also thank Carla Houkamau, Richard McDowell and Fei He for their manaakitanga and careful consideration during the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

This work was supported by Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment [Grant Number LINX1701]; Our Land and Water National Science Challenge [Grant Number Rewarding Sustainable Practices].