WELLINGTON, July 8 (Xinhua) -- The New Zealand government plans to boost research and development through funding to connect top researchers with budding innovators so as to create more high-value jobs and diversify the economy.

"We're supporting people starting out in business to commercialize their research by connecting them to New Zealand's top thinkers, early," New Zealand's Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Megan Woods said on Monday.

The government's plan, funded through the 2019 round of the Commercialization Partner Network and PreSeed Accelerator Fund (PreSeed), will put innovators with talent on the right commercial course, Woods said in a statement.

"This is about unlocking the value of publicly funded research to create new technologies and companies that support a productive economy that is growing and working for all of us," she said.

Over the next two years, KiwiNet, a group of 18 Crown Research Institutes, universities and other research organizations, and the University of Auckland's national commercialization program Return On Science, will use this investment to take Kiwi innovations to market.

Woods said getting the mix of support right is vital if New Zealand is going to grow innovation economy.

New Zealand has an ambitious goal to increase research and development spending to 2 percent of GDP over 10 years.