Published on the 07/10/2011 | Written by Jonathan Cotton
While New Zealand may be a small country at the bottom of the world, it is nevertheless a hothouse for entrepreneurship and innovation, boasting some of the savviest and most creative risk-takers in the world. Why then are we labouring in obscurity? iStart sat down with some of the country’s best and brightest to find out…
With an open economy, highly educated workforce, some of the lowest property costs in the pacific and 100 per cent tax deductibility for research and development, New Zealand is, or at least should be, a Shangri-La for local entrepreneurs and foreign investors alike.
But New Zealand has still got a long way to go.
Despite ideal conditions for business growth and innovation, and the opportunities offered by recent improvements in communication technology, as a whole, the country’s economy, and its fostering of new ideas, has, so far, not blossomed as it should have. A long-standing focus on primary industries like tourism and the dairy industry has left New Zealand with relatively small manufacturing and high-tech sectors.
But someone’s doing something about it.
The ICE Ideas Conference held in July brought together more than thirty of New Zealand’s most successful entrepreneurs and business people to share ideas on what makes a successful entrepreneur, what New Zealand can do as a whole to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, and what it will take to make New Zealand matter on the global stage.
We sat down with a selection of speakers from across the spectrum to get their take on the state entrepreneurship in New Zealand today.
Read the full article as seen in the Q4 2011 iStart – Technology in Business Magazine by clicking on the image below:
