Innovation Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Section D
Inside
Add another ‘B’ to the ‘bach, boat and BMW’ trophy list New Zealand entrepreneurs have long been criticised for cashing up their businesses to settle for the good life instead of growing them to global scale. Callaghan Innovation chief executive Mary Quin says why not add simply add another ‘‘B’’ to the ‘‘bach, boat and BMW’’ trophy list — the billiondollar company? Isn’t it possible to have it all? Xero CEO Rod Drury is one New Zealand entrepreneur who has changed the mould by leveraging US investors to scale his business. Drury is a leading Cloud pioneer who espouses a vision of making New Zealand a ‘‘test lab for the world.’’ It’s a vision that the ‘‘baby Bell’’ investors who took a significant share
in Telecom at the 1990 privatisation also shared, seeing New Zealand as small enough to trial innovations. Telecom Digital boss Rod Snodgrass reckons that though New Zealanders are way more innovative than Australians our problem is ‘‘is scaling things.’’ ‘‘A lot of Kiwis they come up with a really cool idea [but] not many of them are like Rod Drury. Then they go, ‘Right I’m going fishing’. ‘‘I’m a bit like that, I’m thinking I’ve got enough to retire soon. Whereas if you go to the US they just want to do more and more and more.’’ Xero’s Drury is clearly on that track. About 60 per cent of Xero’s revenue is set to come from offshore, off the back of the expansion of the company’s
The ‘‘bach, the Beamer and the boat’’ is great. But let’s have the billiondollar company too. — Mary Quin. CEO Callaghan Innovation accounting software and the expansion of the joint venture with ASB to the Australia market. At the recent Xerocon, Drury also unveiled a ‘‘Farming in the Cloud’’ service, to bring real-time, single ledger reporting to the farm.
The service will allow farmers and their accountants, banks and rural service companies to work together from the same set of online, real-time data. It will likewise provide one centralised home for key accounting and farm management tools. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise research says our national traits — a frontier self-reliance, egalitarianism and a ‘‘she’ll be right’’ attitude — don’t cut the mustard when it comes to taking on the world. But Callaghan’s Quin reckons New Zealand can breed more such billiondollar companies. Mary Quin’s challenge Rod Drury
A national-scale data hub could create a ‘completely new marketplace’ in New Zealand
Alexander Speirs
T
elecom’s Digital Ventures is gearing up to launch a national-scale data hub which it is expected to bill as a great resource for New Zealand Inc. Digital Ventures chief executive Rod Snodgrass says the company believes it can create a ‘‘completely new marketplace here. ‘‘It’s not a big secret but we don’t talk about it openly,’’ says Snodgrass. ‘‘We have built a national-scale data hub for ingesting lots of different data and smashing it together to create insight. And we intend to take that to market soon as a B2B business around data as a service, insight as a service, and full analytics — you can outsource your whole BI (business intelligence) to us and we can run all that with dashboards.’’ Snodgrass said there was an element of public-private partnership to the initiative. ‘‘It’s our vision over time to create an NZ Inc data hub that we’re not the owners of — it’s almost data for equity. You throw your data in and we agree the rules around security and keeping the data anonymous.’’ Snodgrass says key elements are still under wraps. But as an example, he says by putting Telecom’s network and Wi-Fi data together with weather data it could help point the way to Auckland Transport to tell it where it should build roads. The Digital Ventures initiative is one of the most disruptive to roll out of what insiders term Telecom’s ‘‘skunkworks’’. But the ability of NZ
Rod Snodgrass says the vision is to create a NZ Inc data hub. Picture / Natalie Slade
firms to leverage data mining is impacted by a severe lack of available talent domestically. Though the data scientists New Zealand has are ‘‘some of the very best’’, hiring more is proving to be a serious challenge for businesses. Loyalty New Zealand CEO Stephen England-Hall says at the moment his firm is ‘‘throwing the net as wide as
we can and seeing what we reel in. ‘‘Domestically there’s a very small number of people so we have to look everywhere.’’ This year, for the first time, the University of Otago will offer a Master of Business in Data Science. Programme director Michael Winikoff says the university feels data science is a promising area, both in terms of
Tim Miles explains Gen-I’s brave new digital world — D6-7
— D2-3 — D5
The rise of big data Innovation
Upwardly mobile
meeting a real need, and in terms of being an area ‘‘where we had sufficient critical mass of relevant expertise on staff’’. The University of Auckland offered a Master of Professional Studies in Data Science for the first time last year, tailored for those already in the workplace. The initial programme ran with five students but interest for this year’s intake is said to be ‘‘significantly higher’’ as the university looks to build a more flexible schedule to fit around people with professional commitments. There are suggestions it might also link with Telecom to launch a data academy. ‘‘We have a lot of intelligent people in New Zealand, but they don’t know the science behind going through the data process, so that formal education is necessary,’’ says Chandan Ohri who leads KPMG’s IT Advisory team. ‘‘The number of graduates who are coming to us with even a basic knowledge of data and analytics is miniscule. This could really be helped with the introduction of a full threeyear programme.’’ Sam Daish, Kiwibank’s Head of Enterprise Information, cautions that any approach needs to be carefully considered, given the rate at which the sector is evolving. ‘‘It’s more about educating people about the core principles about how this works and teaching transferable skills rather than expecting people to come out of university ready to operate a specific platform. ‘‘What analytics demands is the ability to think clearly about problems, gather facts and group those in a methodically different way to try to uncover unusual and novel insights that you can act on,’’ he says. continued on D2
Sustainable success Simon Power looks at economic solutions for environmental challenges — D11
Start me up Bill Bennett talks to Nigel Parker about Microsoft’s start-up programme — D12-13
Let’s do it differently Innovation needs to be integral, says Michael Barnett — D15
Promoting success Diane Foreman on supporting women entrepreneurs — D23