New Zealanders are among the most creative, innovative and resourceful people in the world. However, these strengths rarely flow through to the economic benefit and personal wealth that is to be expected when compared with international statistics. According to research conducted by Tony Smale of eNZyme Intellect, New Zealand ranks highly on early stage entrepreneurism and adoption of innovations, but poorly on high growth businesses, GDP per capita and GDP per hour worked.

Explaining and reducing this gap could well provide solutions for the New Zealand government’s drive to reduce the productivity and standard of living disparity between Australia and New Zealand, with many of the answers likely to be found deeply ingrained in the kiwi psyche. Generally speaking, our individualistic nature, modesty, short term orientation, and fascination with the pursuit of discovery and leisure fuels a situation which is not conducive to large scale success. Kiwi entrepreneurs take pride in their ability to be self reliant, using their own resourcefulness and creativity to build a lifestyle business for themselves. This number 8 wire mentality creates opportunity and does provide solutions, but not to the extent that the country needs to remain competitive.

Dr Norman Evans, CEO at Upstart Business Incubator in Dunedin is frustrated by the extent to which business opportunities are lost, and startup businesses fail unnecessarily because founders, technical experts and inventors insist on trying to do everything themselves, including running the business long after the time is ripe to bring a professional CEO or skilled entrepreneur into the team.

Kiwis are prolific inventors, and yet it seems that fewer than 1% of patents are ever commercialised. Jason Rogers of James and Wells Lawyers in Christchurch has made it a policy to ask inventors to think about what their next steps would be to commercialise the invention once a patent application has been filed. Without an inventor making a commitment to understand what further time, effort and of course further costs are involved with development and marketing of a new commercial product, it’s likely that many great inventions never see the light of day or reach the shelves. Filing a patent application and obtaining a patent is just one step in a multifaceted process.

The inability to date to realise the economic benefit which is possible from capitalising on our kiwi ingenuity has prompted Upstart to play a new role in the business community. The incubator has partnered with James and Wells, and the Otago Polytechnic’s Evolver Design Innovation Programme to source opportunities and create new intellectual property around commercial solutions that would otherwise remain as a concept or be destined to sit dormant in an invention wasteland. This developed and proven intellectual property is then made available to entrepreneurs willing to build businesses around them so the entrepreneur, the inventor and the economy all win. Support and resources are available to entrepreneurs through the Upstart Entrepreneur Development Programme, and also through business incubation.

The initiative has now been expanded with an inaugural “Upstart Den” to be launched on March 4^th in Upstart’s Dunedin premises, where inventors will have the opportunity to woo the people with the talent, entrepreneurial spirit and big aspirations to turn their inventions and ideas into profit. While the event represents an opportunity for inventors to showcase their inventions in a safe environment, it also provides entrepreneurs with an opportunity to access a business opportunity (potentially with no initial monetary outlay as sweat equity, licensing, royalties or partnership arrangements may be agreed).

The project to match inventors with entrepreneurs is an initiative of Lisa McCarthy from Upstart, who has also played a pivotal role in shaping a collaboration with the Dunedin City Council, Economic Development Unit to facilitate company ‘bootstrapping’ as a means to boost the number and success of startups in the city.

Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, inventions, patents, start up, wealth