Think Small Introduction - Made From New Zealand

Video embed from MadeFromNewZealand.com

Blog Post

The Idea

Last October we launched Made From New Zealand, the Kiwi global business community. Every week since, hundreds of great Kiwi companies from all over the world have joined up, and we’ve been thinking about ways to harness the collective intelligence of that community to share the knowledge within it, not just to make better businesses, but to make a better country. How hard could it be?

So, last week we sat down with a group of senior people at Telecom, our partner in Made From New Zealand, for a New Year catchup. The talk turned to the recession, how big a challenge it’s turning out to be, and what we could do together to help. About then an idea started to come together. It’s a pretty simple idea: let’s set up an easy way for us to help each other through the downturn. Kiwis are smart, resourceful, and tough. So If any country can come out the other end of this year in good shape, it’s New Zealand: we’re small, nimble, and used to hard work. In fact, compared to the once-golden arches of the USA, pretty much every year is a recession for our small business community.

In most cases, the challenges facing Kiwis in business are pretty similar. And in most cases, the solutions to those challenges are already known: there’s people who have seen tough times before, there’s people with great new ideas, and there’s wisdom in a crowd.

Then the idea grew (a little). We decided while we’re dealing with recession-based issues and solutions, let’s broaden the scope to include other, wider, ongoing issues that we’re all concerned: maybe people would like to throw ideas at how we generate electricity, or reduce crime, or deal with copyright, or improve GDP, or whatever issue people want to see some answers to. And one we have a critical mass of support for a solution, lets take action and make it happen: it’s a like a summit, except we’re all invited, it’s on all year, and it’s about results, not talk.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all had the conversations that end in why don’t ‘they’ do something. Well, ‘they’ won’t. Actually, I don’t even think ‘they’ really exist. So let’s the replace the ‘they’ with an ‘us’. It’s business time.

SCOOP EDITOR'S NOTE: Team Scoop.co.nz have been collaborating with the Made From New Zealand team on the ThinkSmall.co.nz project and are absolutely delighted to see it come together and launch in time for Waitangi day.

Congratulations are extended to the Made From New Zealand team for a fantastic web based democracy initiative.

Scoop readers are encouraged to log-in and have their say on the issues and solutions facing the country during this period of economic uncertainty. - Alastair Thompson Scoop Co-editor/Co-founder

ENDS

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