In high gear: the Icehouse's ten year vision
New Zealand needs a growth engine fit to drive our economy.
Monday, August 01 2011 || Comment || BY Greg Cross
Ten years is about half a generation so it’s also a good way to think about whether we are on our way to leaving the country in better or worse shape than it was when we inherited it.
But what’s the big picture? What’s the compelling vision? What are we measuring against and what is this inspiring journey we are on? And how are we making a difference in the lives of New Zealanders?
It’s nearly 10 years since I returned to New Zealand after my last stint as an expat, so I can look at my personal scorecard. I started with a clear view about what I didn’t want to be and formed a vision to build a venture portfolio of globally-focused technology companies. I wanted to live in New Zealand but do business on the international stage. I’ve experimented with, and settled on, a business model based around some simple principles. I enjoy working with passionate, energetic and smart young people and I like joint venture partnerships where I can make a direct, hands-on contribution. The venture has to have the potential for scale and above all, it has to be fun.
Two of my ventures — PowerbyProxi (wireless power) and PureBlack Racing (professional cycling) — are already proving to be internationally competitive, winning business and races in the US. We are tracking towards our vision, achieving our goals and having some fun in the process.
The Icehouse is ticking the same boxes as it celebrates its 10th birthday in this issue. It has a clear vision, it has a proven business model, and it delivers on its value proposition to customers.
It has a passionate, energetic team that loves the work and absolutely revels in making a difference — and having fun while doing it. The team has incubated hundreds of new companies, worked with similar numbers of small and medium-sized enterprises and won international recognition for its work. These people have a big, audacious vision of their future.
They want to connect with and grow thousands of Kiwi companies and entrepreneurs, and in the last
10 years they’ve learned enough to be great at what they do. But they’re different from my group of companies and the organisations they work with daily. The Icehouse was built for economic transformation. To achieve its vision for the next 10 years it needs to fit with New Zealand’s economic growth engine.
The Icehouse has built an amazing ‘turbo charger’ for businesses, but I’m beginning to wonder if we are trying to fit this on to a reconditioned 1960s clunker, rather than a 21st century, fuel-efficient engine that will drive our vision.
This brings us back to the questions I started with. What’s the big picture and the compelling vision, what are we measuring against and what is this inspiring journey we’re on? How are we making a difference in the lives of New Zealanders?
More and more of our businesspeople are doing a great job answering these questions and growing successfully, but as a country we still can’t enunciate a compelling vision, business model or plan, let alone identify the partners we need on the journey. Every three years we recycle an uninspiring vision about being back in the top half of the OECD or closing the gap on Australia.
Something is missing. We need to be courageous enough to set a unique vision for this country, not someone else’s, and above all we need to work out how we can have some fun along the way.
The risk if we don’t is that the innovation and success we have achieved over the last 10 years through organisations such as the Icehouse (which are the key components of a growth engine) will either fall away due to lack of use or get acquired by a country that already has a growth engine fit for the 21st century.
Greg Cross is chairman of the Icehouse and guest edited Unlimited's Icehouse 10th anniversary issue.
75 graduates in 10 years (not 100s as claimed). The revenue of all NZ incubated comapnies (Icehouse about one third) was reported as $145m. This is hardly game changing, especially since some will be 10 years old.
The question that should be asked is: If the incubators are performing then surely they are not the answer if the above results are the outcome. If they are not performing then what is someone going to do - surely we should not allow their media hype to go unchallenged, and let them drive the agenda for change.
Posted by Anonymous at 08:27 on August 3, 2011
OK so what IS the compelling vision ... and if we really do have lots of successful companies is the lack of one something we should worry about?
It would be good to think that after ten glorious years of the Icehouse and heaven knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars invested we would have some answers by now.
I agree that a rethink is necessary: not because we have done massively well and we don't know how to sustain it but for completely the opposite reason - too much mutual backslapping, too many award ceremonies and not enough tangible results.
Posted by Anonymous at 13:58 on August 1, 2011
TC
The Icehouse, VC's and VIF make up a cosy little clique who constantly reinforce each other's "good news" messages.
They all do pretty well out of it and I sometimes wonder why, given the amount of public money that has gone into this sector, no journalist or politican has ever asked any hard questions.
Posted by Anonymous at 03:26 on August 4, 2011
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