The university and the incubator: together alone

The Icehouse and the University of Auckland are inextricably linked, but has the Icehouse achieved everything the university hoped it would?

Wednesday, August 17 2011 || Icehouse 10th anniversary || BY Lesley Springall

To explain why the Icehouse is so important to the University of Auckland, you have to go back to the beginning. Back to the days of prime minister Helen Clark when people were fired up by the impending Knowledge Wave conference.

The 2001 conference — organised by Clark’s government and the university — brought international leaders and 300 prominent New Zealanders together to, in Clark’s words, “lift our national sights and move beyond familiar, sometimes stale debates about the direction that New Zealand is heading in”.
It was all about transforming New Zealand into a high value, knowledge-based economy, says Geoff Whitcher, director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the University of Auckland’s Business School and a director of the Icehouse.

But to transform the economy, educational establishments needed to change too. The Business School wanted to be at the forefront of these changes to focus on driving wealth creation in New Zealand, says Barry Spicer, a professor and former dean of the Business School who helped found the Icehouse. “The establishment of the Icehouse was part of the development of our thinking. We felt the Business School had to do more to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to grow. But we also knew to be successful in this we would need an appropriate channel they would be comfortable with.”

Whitcher acknowledges Kiwi owner managers did not have much respect for academia, and academics at the time weren’t particularly good at relating to the business community. But Spicer says his idea for a Centre for SMEs — and the subsequent idea for an Institute of Entrepreneurship proposed by David Irving (the former Heinz Wattie’s chief executive who became the Business School’s first executive in residence and co-founder of the Icehouse) — failed to attract the necessary financial support from the business community. It was only when Whitcher, recently returned from a visit to Cambridge University, proposed adding a business incubator to the nascent Institute for Entrepreneurship that other partners were persuaded to join. So finally, with support from people like Bridget Liddell, managing partner at US-based Fahrenheit Ventures, the Icehouse was born.
The Icehouse is an important part of the innovation ecosystem, says Whitcher. It bridges the gap between education and business for owner managers — and between a startup and a successful business. But it’s more than that, he says. “If you’d mentioned ‘angel’ to anyone back in 2000 they’d have thought you were talking about a body in heaven.”

Setting up the country’s first angel investment network was another Icehouse initiation, born from the realisation that bridging finance was required before a company could apply for venture capital, he says.
The Icehouse’s large and growing network of alumni, entrepreneurs, investors and academics has become an important part of the region’s innovation ecosystem, says Spicer. It’s also introduced a whole new network of people to the University of Auckland.

The Icehouse feeds knowledge back into the Business School. “The bridge goes both ways. Academics who teach at the Icehouse have been able to take their knowledge out into the business world, but they’ve also brought knowledge gained from their interactions back into the university as well,” he says.Ten years on, the Icehouse has expanded the range and reach of its programmes. Its incubator skills have improved and its national and international links have grown exponentially. The Icehouse and the Business School have expanded the work they do together offering courses such as the Ice Global programme for exporters. The Icehouse also supports the university’s other entrepreneurial initiatives including Spark, the student-led entrepreneurship challenge; Chiasma, linking biotechnology and entrepreneurship; and the Entrepreneurs’ Challenge.

“In the development of the ecosystem, the Icehouse has delivered on all its promises and more,” says Whitcher. Spicer agrees. The Icehouse has met and surpassed many of the goals the university hoped it would. But Spicer says there’s more he’d like the Icehouse to do, especially research linked to making our SMEs more entrepreneurial.

Spicer admits the Icehouse wouldn’t have achieved half of what it’s been able to if it had just been a division of the Business School. It needs to stand alone, he says, to genuinely partner with the business community.