The drive by governments to find new means of managing technological change in the quest for competitive advantage has led to an expansion in the international construction of high technology incubators for the purpose of accelerating innovation rates. In 1987 the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) asked the Australian government to jointly build in Australia a ‘city of the future’ known as the Multifunction Polis (MFP) which would incubate high technology industries for the twenty-first century. An analysis of the curious course of MFP design negotiations sheds light on a number of important issues including cultural differences in constructing solutions to national innovation problems and the use of the promise of innovation in shaping international relations.