Geoff Whitcher

Some bright spark suggested that if we’d cloned Geoff Whitcher we would have a whole generation of young Kiwi entrepreneurs taking the world by storm.

His official title — director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the University of Auckland Business School — doesn’t describe the half of it. Whitcher is responsible for spreading the spirit of entrepreneurialism throughout the school with programmes like the Spark Entrepreneurial Challenge, which has nurtured the creation of more than 75 companies selling into 22 countries. Between them, Spark’s offspring have raised more than $50 million funding. You ain’t seen nothing yet. Mention a recent column claiming New Zealand missed the Knowledge Wave and Whitcher sighs. The Knowledge Wave conference in 2001 was supposed to spark development of a high value, knowledge-based economy.

Good things take time, says Whitcher, who reckons we are almost at tipping point. “If you look at Silicon Valley, its genesis is traced back to Hewlett Packard starting up in a garage in Palo Alto in 1939. The entrepreneurial ecosystem at Cambridge has been growing for around 40 years. We really have just got through the first decade.”

Whitcher likes to joke that the only serial entrepreneur in New Zealand at the start of the 21^st century was Dick Hubbard. Now we have people like Rod Drury leading the charge. Smart money is coming here from offshore and we are becoming more experienced at commercialisation.

Through his mentorship of students like Priv Bradoo (see page 31) and his patient nurturing of Spark and Chiasma — which aims to foster entrepreneurship among the University of Auckland’s biotech students — the former Fletcher Challenge executive is growing a generation of business savvy, ambitious Kiwi entrepreneurs helping transform the economy.

- Mark Revington






Greg Cross

First things first. Greg Cross does not have shares in Unlimited. Nor does he hold a file of compromising photos of the editor (Can we double check? – Ed). Nope, he’s here purely on merit, because we reckon his bold plan to see a New Zealand team contest the world’s greatest bike race could put the cycling world in a spin. And Lord knows it’s a sport that needs a clean and novel vision.

Cross is the business brain behind PureBlack Racing, a professional cycling team of Kiwi riders aiming to be on the startline of the 2015 Tour de France.

That’s just the latest line on his CV. We’d take up the rest of this page with the full details, but to put it simply, Cross is an astute Kiwi entrepreneur, CEO and company director with a gleaming reputation for nurturing IT companies. A former managing director of Microsoft New Zealand, he’s now chairman of business incubator The Icehouse.

But it seems Cross is having the most fun with this latest venture. A Sunday brunch rider who knows his chain rings from his bidens, he was captivated when approached by former America’s Cup and world sailing champion Carl Williams. Having established an amateur cycling team, Williams didn’t have the business nous to ratchet it up a gear. Fortunately, they crossed paths thanks to mutual friend Graeme Wall, the guy behind the national cycleway concept.

They quickly figured that melding Williams’ America’s Cup experience with Cross’ prowess in running IT companies would produce a different type of business, a different organisation and a different culture to anything seen in professional cycling before. It’s no coincidence, then, that they’ve drawn inspiration from Sir Peter Blake who did just that with Team New Zealand and sailing 16 years ago.

Since starting in the US this season they’ve consistently performed on the road and focused on building a solid organisational framework, creating and marketing an iconic brand and implanting a winning team culture.

If they can reach Le Tour in four years’ time, it will be an astounding achievement. But Cross’ philosophy is if you don’t set big goals, you can never achieve them. Knowing his background we’d be the last to bet against the possibility of PureBlack’s Roman van Uden or Mike Northey pursuing the maillot jaune, the coveted yellow jersey.
— Suzanne McFadden








John Boys

Google him and you won’t exactly be inundated with information, yet Professor John Boys of the University of Auckland really ought to be a household name. The vast majority of the world’s microchips are made in clean room factories that operate with wireless power because of Boys’ inventions. Your inexpensive Sony flat panel TV screens? Again, made possible in part thanks to technology originating from the electrical engineer’s lab.
“John must be one of the most inventive people in the world,” says Will Charles, general manager of technology development at the university’s commercialisation arm Uniservices. “There are two overseas-based companies and six New Zealand companies that started based on intellectual property that began with him. He’s an incredibly prolific inventor.”
With more than 50 patents to his name, Boys is particularly known as a key developer of wireless power transfer — or the ability to transfer power across a gap without contact — a platform technology which, as suggested above, has produced diverse commercial applications. Most recently it’s been rolled out by Uniservices spinoff HaloIPT as a way to wirelessly charge electric cars.
That might sound like a gimmick, but one of the barriers to electric car ownership has been people’s reluctance to lug all those cables around. Looking further ahead Boys has set his mind to the possibilities for ‘dynamic in-motion charging’, a technology that would allow drivers to charge their vehicles while they drive.
“John is very forward thinking,” says HaloIPT Asia Pacific CEO Dr Anthony Thomson. “He doesn’t have the normal boundaries that you or I have got and he’s bordering on genius in his ability to visualise technology and how things might work.”
Adds Charles, “He has an incredible mind and is always thinking about a problem and how it can be solved. He’s really one of a kind.”
— Matt Philp