Win and the monkey is off our back, National will sail back into office with an increased majority, our economy will boom and all will be good with life. Lose, or not even take part in the October 23^rd final, and we sink into a deep country wide depression, with the election becoming a lottery and our economy getting shaky. This is the reality of New Zealand. And most of us love it.

Having been away for seventeen years (living in London, Hong Kong and New York) I know only too well the impact and identity that the All Blacks carry overseas. Ask many Europeans what they know about New Zealand and they will talk about a country of natural beauty, sheep and the All Blacks. (Ask the Americans, and they will talk about a place just next to Texas.)

The alignment of our national identity with the All Blacks is particurily pertinent in the UK. You will find little/no mention of New Zealand in UK papers, only in the sports pages and primarily only in regard to rugby. And within the sports pages there is one team, one name, one brand that is associated with power, performance, results and excellence. The All Blacks.

Every Kiwi living in London knows how vital it is that we beat the Poms, especially at Twickenham. While our colonial masters look down their noses at us at every opportunity, there’s one thing that stops them in their tracks. One thing they have to concede. The All Blacks.

Of course sadly now we have the ‘choker’ card played back to us. How many of us haven’t had the conversation that goes, ‘OK, you can win everything else, but when it matters, you bottle it.’

Winning the World Cup this year matters to all New Zealanders but dare I say, it matters even more to those living abroad, especially in London. There are few things worse than an English fan pompously reminding you that you can’t win when it matters (of course a quick reference to football tends to even out that conversation.)

So what happens on October 23^rd really matters.

It matters for all of us Kiwis now living at home who desperately need to see our team, our guys and our identity rewarded with the ultimate rugby prize.

And for those Kiwis living abroad and watching from sets on the other side of the world….we get it. We know how really important this is to you to.

You will either march into work triumphant on Monday October 24^th with the choker tag removed forever, or that Monday could well be the first of many tough ones. And ringing in all our ears will be George Gregan’s brutal three words….four more years.

I left New Zealand 18 years ago as a naïve, nervous, and quietly excited adventurer to work and travel abroad. My chef qualification, the way I was brought up, and the country I was brought up in, played a huge part in how I adapted to jobchanges and travel, providing a platform for thedrive and determination to make the most of what the world could offer. I became aglobal advocate for New Zealand explaining to others what a nice spot we had ‘down-under’ not only could it be exclusive, but was secluded,largely pristine, and away from the ‘hot spot’ troubles of the world which meant it could be fun. I soon found that New Zealanders didn’t need to sell themselves or their country to the world as we had made our mark in many areas. I don’t need to go into details here because we all know the stories; the tales of heroes, those unassuming men and women who have been successfulon the international stage, and done special things using their own skills and talents to help themselves, their country and others as well.

As a chef, not an economist, I don’t know how we measure the value of New Zealanders’ capacity for developing good ideas, using common sense, showing tenacity, and working well except to say that these things seem to come naturally to a large number of us. In turn, we seem to have accumulated inter-generational adaptability skills from those who have gone before us to make do with what is available,explore how things work, copein good and bad situations, be creative, and use the resources at hand. We have it in our blood to stick with it and overcome obstacles when they’re put in front of us. When employing any staff member for my kitchen I am acutely aware of these attributes and they are always at the top of my list when choosing people for jobs. In other words, adaptability is a priceless skill.

In the last 15 years my role has been to ‘go global’ focusing on adapting restaurants for different cities, in changing social environments and cultural settingsfrom London to New York, Los Angeles, and Melbourne. Understanding what the locals wanted, what they understood was on offer, how menus should and could be written, how food needed to be cooked, sourced and treated, and working with the local staff to make sure I was getting the best out of them was important. We had to show leadership to overcome problems, adapt to changes, make systems work, refine structures and use our abilities and talents to build from the ground up when we needed to. I am not sure that anyone taught me how to accomplish these things, but I am sure that many of the traits to achieve successful outcomes were already ingrained in my ‘New Zealand’ way of thinking.

The point for New Zealand isthat we don’t need to stand on top of our sheds shouting and raving about our own backyard because that battle has already been won without trying too hard. What we already have is a “brand” a “package to go” which sells itself. The country speaks for itself and the fan club is alive and well. Likewise, we don’t need to look across the ditch and envy the economic benefits others receive from natural resources. Of course there are things we could work much harder on includingreinvigorating the clean green image that NZ put so much emphasis on at an earlier stage.

Yet, in order to adapt and continue to ‘go global’we must be in agreement on moving forward with long term goals set in place, rather than adopt shallow, short term get famous, get rich quick, schemes.Many have experienced the financial hurdles that lie in wait for anyone who dare go out and risk ‘going global’withoutrecognizing fully the importanceof opportunities and threats. In my experience, there are always hurdles in doing anything globally, but generally a way can be found over or around hurdles. In fact, confronting a hurdle and working around it often pushes oneto embrace a more creative space, and eventually results in a better, more profitable and suitable direction than the route taken in the first place.Adaptability is the pathway to any new venture.The key to this is being savvy and clever which is the stuff underdogs thrive on – there is nothing wrong with chipping away until you, your product, or your service become indispensible. Quiet achievers and noisy entrepreneurs are necessary to get the best out of competition.

It is a tough market out there, many ideas are well established, the pace is fast, times are ruthless, and the market uncompromising. Because it is not in our nature to big note, to brag, to talk things up too much, then let’s not bother to try to change this, rather, let’s leave that to others, and quietly ‘go global’ armed with the tenacious New Zealand spirit. We are seen as a young country, with fresh new ideas, and where we go from here is our choice, choice being something we have in abundance. When New Zealand is spoken about in any situation, quality, dependability, honesty, reliability, refined tasteand even elegance are words that should rapidly spring to mind.

In business, for example, sustained high returns on capital are a better measure of performance. However, the New Zealand business culture is far too “think small”. Make a couple of million – relax, buy a holiday home and a boat.

Exporting or growth is too much effort – who needs it when you are comfortable? What Kiwi can fairly quibble? Such approaches arguably show a more balanced commitment to family, friends and sometimes the community than spending time growing a company and competing internationally.

Unfortunately, this culture falls down in creating the skills and job opportunities for New Zealanders which only larger businesses provide.

We are not all able or want to be entrepreneurs or chief executives, but a Nation of small local businesses or branch offices will not create deep middle management; it will tend to limit research and product development; and, it will be relatively unattractive for ambitious quality management who do not want to start a business.

It also means less employment of the people who naturally congregate around head offices – consultants, lawyers, accountants, designers, cleaners, caterers etc and even once-removed groups such as those in tertiary teaching institutions.

While larger companies may not have the growth rates of start-ups, their scale and business practices can have a substantial and positive impact on employees, contractors, universities and so on.  The New Zealand’s capital markets benefit more from the top ten listed companies than the bottom 50 or even 100. Were Fonterra to list it would attract international interest and some of those investors would get excited about other opportunities in New Zealand, potentially enabling smaller businesses to succeed and grow.

A few years ago, I was regularly approached by parties wishing to acquire Morrison & Co (www.hrlmorrison.com) – it made sense, the markets were ‘hot’ and there were many parties able to pay serious numbers because the business could be easily subsumed into an international model, with considerable overhead savings.

However, we took the decision to continue to build the business knowing full well that it was likely there would be financial ups and downs ahead – after all, in my case, I really enjoy my job and a pile of cash was not a real measure of success nor a route to fulfilment; I don’t need a new car or house; and, I believe New Zealand needs bigger businesses.

As a result of that decision, Morrison & Co employed Marko Bogoievski (over a year before I became aware I was ill) to become CEO of both Morrison & Co and Infratil (www.infratil.com), the listed company Morrison & Co formed and manages. Had that decision not been taken Marko, unquestionably one of the Country’s finest executives (incidentally with experience in both start-ups and large companies), would have been lost from New Zealand to offshore.

 As a result of Marko’s appointment Morrison & Co and Infratil have been able to weather the GFC at the same time as investing heavily in the employment of many new top class executives and to expand offshore. As the world stumbles through the remainder of the GFC and then recovers to grow again both Morrison & Co and Infratil are better structured, resourced and positioned for the next 20 years of growth and performance – and, importantly, both will become increasingly material contributors to New Zealand’s success.

How can KEA members support the formation and development of larger businesses in New Zealand? A hard question to answer, but some suggestions : communicate with Directors and Management of New Zealand companies offering them ideas for expansion in international markets; actively participate as investors in NZX listed companies and as shareholders write to Boards and Management pressuring them to grow their businesses for long term gain rather than taking short term opportunities to sell or milk profits; join the NZ Institute of Directors or engage with New Zealand head-hunting firms offering your skills as Directors of New Zealand companies – in my experience, internationally based Directors who are New Zealanders can provide very beneficial input to local companies : they have different and higher skilled experience based on operating internationally; they often see the world differently; they are interested in New Zealand’s success and that leads them to consider a New Zealand directorship; and, while not available to attend every Board meeting, can be happy to travel to New Zealand regularly enough together with contributing by phone or email as required on other occasions.

In my view, New Zealand is better placed to succeed than in any time in my lifetime. But to do so, we’ll need a step change an aspiration/ambition and commitment. We need to understand the benefits of economic success and the necessity of such gains to enable us to create the society we long for. Successful kiwis living offshore have a real contribution to make is shaping these aspirations and achieving these outcomes.

It is a combination of many factors, the principal ones being the status of New Zealand as a cool climate viticultural country, and in Marlborough the presence in the soils of a chemical compound, methoxypyrazine that adds uniquely distinctive flavours to Sauvignon Blanc grapes and wine.

In the late ‘eighties and early ‘nineties, when the New Zealand wine sector began to flex its collective muscle first in Britain, and then in America, we proclaimed ourselves to be ‘home of cool climate wines”, reminding people who know about wine that the advantages of cool climate for wine grape production are intensity of both fruit flavour and varietal character.

Before the emergence of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc on the world stage, the two main areas in which it flourished were the Loire Valley in France, and California, both of which offered restrained flavours, many masked by a little oak.

No one did more in Britain to welcome the arrival of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc than one of its leading wine commentators, Oz Clarke, who wrote in his Wine Atlas: “No previous wine had shocked, thrilled, entranced the world before with such brash, unexpected flavours of gooseberries, passionfruit and lime, or crunchy green asparagus spears . . . an entirely new, brilliantly successful wine style that the rest of the world has been attempting to copy ever since”.

Just a few weeks ago, in an interview in New Zealand WineGrower magazine, Clarke commented on “the brightness, clarity, clean flavours, that tangy, zesty ping on your palate, the way that your mouth bursts out with your salivary glands just throwing themselves into turbo-charged overdrive every time a Sauvignon Blanc came on to them. It made your eyes bright, it made you sparkle with excitement and say ‘what a wonderful flavour!’ – a flavour that you invented that didn’t exist in the world of wine before New Zealand came along.”

I am proud of the involvement of Hunters Wines in creating attention for Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc in Britain. It was my late husband Ernie who first brought Marlborough wines to prominence in Britain, when, in 1986, Hunter’s Fume Blanc 1985, a Sauvignon Blanc aged in oak, made history at the annual Sunday Times Wine Fair in London by becoming the first wine ever to be voted top wine of the fair on each of its three days by the attending public, and then gained an added and previously unheard-of distinction by being also selected top wine of the Fair by an eminent panel of expert wine judges.

The next Sunday Times featured a triumphant Ernie Hunter brandishing the winning trophy which had just been presented to him by wine guru Hugh Johnson, the first time any New Zealand wine had achieved such prominence in Britain. To prove it was no fluke, Hunters won the trophy again in 1987. When we made it a hat-trick in 1988, I had to be in London, because Ernie had been killed in a motor accident just north of Christchurch late in 1987.

Ernie’s introduction was consolidated by Montana Wines Ltd whose massive production of their high quality Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc gained entry to shelves of supermarkets, wine shops and restaurants throughout the United Kingdom. The UK is a world-leading, trend setting market for the world’s wine, dating back to earlier centuries when British royalty virtually owned Burgundy, held sway in Aquitaine (the area we know today as Bordeaux), and created the market for sherries from Spain and ports from Portugal.  Our concentration on breaking into the British wine market was based on the belief that if we could succeed there, we could succeed anywhere.

How well we have succeeded is demonstrated by this flashback: In a speech in 1999, I said this: “In 1976, when the Institute opened for business, exports of wine from New Zealand in round figures were 300,000 litres valued at $400,000 fob. This year [1999, remember], 23 years on, the export volume is heading for 16 million litres worth well over $100 million fob.  From virtually nothing, exports now represent 28 per cent of our total sales. The latest estimate of where we’ll be in 2010, is exports of at least 80 million litres, earning at least $600 million fob, selling much more wine to the rest of the world, than we expect to sell within New Zealand.”

What an under-estimate that was!  By 2010, our exports in the 12 months to 28 February have reached 132.13 million litres, worth $1.021 billion. Of that, Sauvignon Blanc was 82% by volume.  I do not agree with criticism that we have too many Sauvignon eggs in our export basket. Sauvignon has become New Zealand’s signature wine, just as bottle fermented sparklings are for Champagne, clarets for Bordeaux, Pinot Noirs for Burgundy.

It has been Sauvignon that has opened doors for our second largest export variety, Pinot Noir, and for expanding white varieties such as Riesling and Pinot Gris.

 It is true that over-enthusiasm in planting Sauvignon has caused some temporary speed wobbles, as production in 2008 and 2009 exceeded market demand in a world in global financial recession, but our grape growers and wineries have responded to that. In Marlborough, the 2010 vintage will be down on volume from 2008/9, but we have pruned for quality rather than quantity, and we can promise the world the finest wines ever from our region.

 Our task now, especially with Sauvignon Blanc, is to regain international acceptance that New Zealand, and Marlborough in particular, is the world leader in Sauvignon Blanc quality. One way to achieve this recognition is to make more of our officially recognised and practised sustainable winegrowing system in which we are streets ahead of other wine producing countries.  In a world becoming more environmentally conscious, that can become a selling proposition as unique as is the flavour of our Sauvignon Blanc.

Quiet! Little! Corner! Yet again I was reminded that “language matters”. For many years I have worked against the notion of New Zealand as “small”, yet time and again it creeps into our national conversation. The natural modesty of New Zealanders, the get-it-done-without-fuss ethic, the “knock the bugger off” attitude that carried Ed Hillary to the top of Everest, are among our greatest strengths. I work with New Zealanders in what seems to be every part of the world. I can see how our gruff, chipper sense of teamwork creates priceless value wherever it is deployed. Shayne Gilbert is leading the UN relief effort in Haiti. Helen Clark is leading the UN’s development effort designed to pull a billion people out of poverty. Chris Liddell is now Vice Chairman of General Motors. Steve Williams will have Tiger Woods’ back as he attempts to pull his game and life back on track. These are each examples of turnaround situations which require a tenacious, pragmatic yet calm and principled approach. The message could be, “got a tough job to do – call in a New Zealander. They’ll deliver 100%.”

The “quiet little corner” metaphor plays to the worst attributes of our psychology: that we are subservient, under-achieving, provincial, even feral. What if the Air New Zealand announcement had spoken of the journey to “our proud warrior nation at the leading edge of change, not only world-class but world-changing, and on our flight you’ll sample the fruits of our garden in paradise, our farm from nirvana, and our vineyards from heaven.” Yes, to coin the great Kiwi put down, it’s “over the top”, but it serves to illustrate that the story we present of ourselves to the world needs a makeover.

We can turn out Oscar-winning scripts but the one for the country itself has been sorely neglected. We either underdo it, as seen in the mantra of “small” we infect ourselves with, or overdo it, as seen in the crushing disappointments that we visited upon ourselves for the past three Rugby World Cups when we built our All Blacks up to walk on water.

The 2011 Rugby World Cup is the world’s third largest sporting tournament. It will be a brilliant showcase for New Zealand, provided we are up for it. I’m not talking about the rugby – I’m going to leave that to Graham Henry and Richie McCaw. I’m not talking about whether the planes get everyone where they’re meant to be on time – I’m leaving that to Air New Zealand.

What I am talking about is our job as citizens, and our role in welcoming tens of thousands of visitors – players, media, fans – and billions of viewers throughout the world. If our starting point is that we’re a “quiet little corner of the South Pacific” then we have defeated ourselves before we start. We need to raise our sights a little, talk it up a bit, sharpen our edge, and polish our exuberance. I’m not talking about being something we aren’t: New Zealanders are naturally hospitable, let’s just imbue the conversation with a higher sense of purpose and metaphor.

Bring on the storytellers, raise up the scriptwriters, turn on the songwriters! We need a fresh New Zealand narrative that positions us well in the world at a time when millions of people will be participating in what we are offering.

Give it edge, enthusiasm and a power of emotion!

I have listened to that CD many times since and on every hearing I marvel at how its sounds manage to capture so well the essence of the place.  This is not a voice of velvet clad concert halls.  Its raw edge echoes the pinnacle ridges of soaring peaks, fading down the misty gorges.  Its lingering sadness brings up a wellspring of past suffering and stoic endurance, nuanced with hope.  I am fascinated at how she achieves this and grapple with trying to understand the artistic process that produces such deeply moving results . . . mostly in vain.  It is not unique; such symbiosis of human creativity with place (by ‘place’ I mean both land and time) has been a fundamental part of every culture since our species first evolved.

You can see it in adobe buildings in African countries like Cameroon or Mali, where impossibly beautiful, but practical forms are built as bodily expression of only hands and mud.  Or in Persian carpets, or Aboriginal art, or many many more examples.  You can see it in Maori carvings, in the spiraling, pierced forms of the great waka that seem to reflect the stars and galaxies of the heavens that guided them to this land, and the closely bound communities of whanau and hapu.  Totara is easily incised with obsidian and jade tools, and its bland texture encouraged added patterns, unlike the dominant wood grain of most tropical woods.

Lyonel Grant, artist and master-carver, has written about the great historical taonga displayed in the Te Maori exhibition of the eighties, and believes that today we are not capturing that deeply powerful magic in our art (2).  Why not?  I suggest the answer lies in our disconnect from the natural environment, and with it the loss of a sense of devotion.  Western society has made staggering technological and intellectual achievements of which we can be proud.  But we are learning now that they come at a price, evident in a ravaged environment and disempowered peoples.  This forces us to reassess, and look at what we have lost.

There is a species of African monkey that, when it gets sick, will travel many miles through the forest to a lone tree.  It will carefully strip the toxic bark off the twigs and suck out the juice of the pith.  Scientific investigation has proved that this is an effective medicine for that precise ailment that we knew nothing about (3).  How did the monkey know? – where to find the tree and how to use it??!  If you got sick would you instinctively do that?  No, even if you “knew” what to do, your rational brian would intervene.  The animal world is full of such stories.

There are theories that our language evolved out of the environment (4).  Early humans echoed the sounds they heard around them.  They were utterly immersed in their surroundings and could intuitively read what they heard.  Every different whisper of wind in the trees meant something to them.  The Corsican language evolved between the echoing walls of bare rock valleys which spoke those sounds, so Micaelli’s singing can only be from there.

Long, long before Europeans stumbled around the oceans in their clumsy ships, with little idea where they were, the Polynesians were colonising vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean.  Generations of accumulated knowledge and wisdom were concentrated in the one lone navigator who barely slept for days as he focused all his being on bringing up the island in front of him.  Every different ripple in the water surface, every variation in the twinkle of a star or sough of the wind, every movement of bird or fish, all these meant something to him, as he positioned himself under the rotating cacophony of stars he knew so intimately.  The human world is full of many such stories.

In so many past cultures nature was not usually something to be conquered, it was not a source from which riches could be wrested.  Those who dwelt there were absolutely a part of it.  The navigator only succeeded if he yielded himself fully to the ocean – any vestige of ego would cause him to lose his place in the wider picture.  With this immersion and dependence came a respect and a sense of devotion.  All early forms of spirituality were directed at nature and were at one with it.  As we have lost our connection to nature, so also we have lost our sense of devotion and our true spirituality.

The carvers of the taonga in Te Maori would have lived a very different life to today’s artists.  All their physical and spiritual energies would have been focused entirely on their work, overseen by clearly structured protocols that had evolved to increase that focus.  They were absolutely a part of their place, to the extent that all the their carving chips were carefully returned to the forest from where the tree came.  How can carvers of today match that focus when they are deluged by so many distractions that dilute their concentration?

We talk about seeking a New Zealand identity.  But pakeha society has no relevant past culture, only sentimental European links.  It has no language and sacred songs born out of its surrounding mountain valleys, or buildings formed out of its earth.  Its thin lipped settler society is predicated on a total destruction of the previous ecology to replace it with imported farming (5).  It is culturally destitute and lacking in nourishment.  In the saturated and distracting global stream of instant and self-centred gratification how can today’s artists connect to meaningful depths?

Talking to Kim Hill, Don McGlashan stressed the importance of stories: “Existing isn’t enough . . . You have to tell stories, otherwise we disappear.”  Many old stories remain in a culture because they provide some of its identity and because they contain morals that have enabled it to survive.  Maori creation myths include the tale of Tane receiving the three baskets of knowledge from the gods in their heaven.  Kete Aronui contained the knowledge of the natural world, of the forests the oceans and our bodies.  Kete Tuauri contained our rational knowledge and Kete Tuaatea contained our spiritual knowledge.

I designed a lighting installation based on these three kete which we first showed in Milan last year (6).  My intention was to bring something of Maori culture to the world and to show that it contains morals relevant to everyone.  I suggested that Kete Tuauri has become too big and is drowning out our connection to the natural and spiritual worlds.  Only when we get these three back in balance will we have hope for a better future . . . and only then will artists begin the long path to creating a true New Zealand culture and identity.

References.

1. Corsica Sacra by Jacky Michaelli, Auvidis label.
2. Keynote lecture at Cumulus conference at Unitec, November 2009.
3. Biomimicry by Janine Benyus.
4. The Spell of the Sensous by David Abram
5. Theatre Country by Geoff Park
6. www.davidtrubridge.com/2009/

I remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. I grew up on a sheep farming property up the Rakaia Gorge in Canterbury, in one the most picturesque, pristine places on the planet.

Three times a week a mailbag arrived with all our mail and anything that had been ordered from the big faraway city of Christchurch.

This particular day out of the bag tumbled a tiny shoe box, the shoes inside for me to wear to a very special wedding.

My mother opened the box, took out a pair of the most beautiful pair of shiny red shoes, I had ever seen, and turned them over. On the bottom of the shoes was printed three words “Made in England”. That means they are good quality she said.

Obviously nearly half a century later things have changed. The reality is a country is a brand, and that brand has a value – positive or negative, and creates or destroys value on every output from that country.

My vision for brand New Zealand is that ‘from New Zealand’, ‘made in New Zealand’, or simply ‘of New Zealand’ instinctively means to someone on the other side of the world that this product or service originates in a country which leads the world in environmental, social and cultural best practice delivered in a context of inspiring design values. We are uniquely placed to really earn this set of country brand values, and to deliver something with values that money can’t buy from anywhere else on the planet.

These brand values touch deep into the soul of the new global consumer.

This new global consumer has a growing desire to re-invest their lives with a sense of value and spiritual worth.

This consumer is more thoughtful.

This new consumer movement is a mindset, not driven by the ability to pay.

This new consumer movement is driven by consumers no longer wanting to buy things they do not need. It is driven by wanting to feel good and be inspired about each purchase, shopping with an ethical, social, civic and eco conscience for emotional, spiritual and personal wellbeing.

This consumer will reward ethical brands and penalise errant ones – including national brands.

It is now 2035, our new consumer has selected a New Zealand product or service. Its design and delivery is inspiring and they know that the quality of life in New Zealand is inspirational.

They know that to visit New Zealand they’ll have to pay a little at the border, but once there they can enjoy the cleanest, most unpolluted outdoor environments and urban centres; stunning facilities; the country is safe with high employment right across population sectors – and that the food they eat will be alive and bursting with goodness. They can see New Zealanders long ago stopped saying why it can’t be done, and have come up with a raft of supposedly ‘impossible’ outcomes for a country of its population and resources. Impossible in the same way that solutions in Curitiba, Brazil implemented were ‘impossible’, addressing infrastructure issues as transportation, the information highway, waste, energy and green space. New Zealand has, for example, invested in getting cyclists safely away from vehicles on roads finding, that children and commuters are now cycling to school and work reducing road congestion and improving health and wellbeing, and ultimately the balancing of the books too.

Our new consumer knows that in New Zealand it is no longer cool to drive when you can ride or use efficient mass transit services. They know New Zealand is developing sound practical policy based on all the information now freely available as information technology becomes ever more efficient. Our new consumer, knows already they would find most importantly a country that has recognised the value in investing in education in its most comprehensive sense.

They know that this is a country that has discovered the secret to success is to never forget the heart…that to dwell in the head for too long dries out the spirit, that their country will only ever be as good as their people. They know there is an acceptance that the human spirit demands stimulation in order to grow and that competition still remains the best mode of achieving that end. Competition has been reintroduced into school life in New Zealand coupled with the drive to find the good and the strengths in every individual and celebrate these.

Our new consumer knows young people in New Zealand are motivated and have extraordinary levels of self worth, both attributes worryingly diminishing decades earlier. They know it is a country that has embraced new ways to access learning in different types of learners. They know it is a country that understands that when one embraces competition the innate qualities that every human has begin to come to the fore – effort, focus, determination, passion, love, imagination, strength immediately start to surface. Call it survival, call it a desire to win or simply call it a desire to feel great….it all adds up to energy. If one does not work with the above qualities one cannot possibly have energy…and without energy, success at what an individual or a country wishes to achieve becomes impossible. New Zealand has as a result become a hotbed of innovation and successful innovative business.

This is why New Zealand has risen to the top of the OECD in hard economic terms and has the highest Gross Happiness Index (GHI) In the past there was almost always an inverse correlation between GDP and GHI. New Zealand delivers the most exciting compelling products and services to the world in a way the planet can sustain and thrive on.

This is why New Zealand has the most aspirational country brand there is.

This is why it is a joy to travel about the world as a New Zealander, and live beyond New Zealand but retain ones connection with New Zealand.

But back to 2010. New Zealand has a chance to put substance behind its already positive brand and to make this vision for our brand real, but we need courage, commitment and speed. Have we got all of that? If not, can we get it?

History shows us we undoubtedly have the courage. The commitment is what groups among the KEA network can support in generating – and if the commitment is strong enough the speed will come.

Jaime Lerner, Mayor of Curitiba for twelve years, said:

“There is no endeavour more noble than the attempt to achieve a collective dream. When a city (or country) accepts as a mandate its quality of life; when it respects the people who live in it; when it respects the environment; when it prepares for future generations, the people share the responsibility for that mandate, and this shared cause is the only way to achieve that collective dream.”

He also said that as long as we are prepared to say we couldn’t do what Curitiba did, “because….”, we are leaving undone a great opportunity to make positive change, that it simply needs us to say ‘yes’ we will make it happen.

The new consumer is here now.
There is no time to lose. But it is not too late.

Of the $450m of sales achieved in 2005, $300m was attributed to portable car navigation devices, truly the “odd man out” business unit from a New Zealand point of view. The remaining three business units, marine navigation, fleet tracking and GPS receiver modules could be considered a closer match to the more typical “narrow vertical” Kiwi business model but still punching well above the Kiwi average in terms of global market share.

There are several key ingredients to the success of any business. New Zealand has many well managed companies who grow steadily in the good years and manage to hold their own in the bad, but very few ever shift into “hyperdrive” and achieve international success.  Why is this?

I have read many different papers written over the past ten years on the “key elements of success”, there are many different views but top of my list is the culture of the management team.  To replicate a Navman success in a similar time frame the core team must manage the business with a sense of desperation and urgency. The management team’s view on what success looks like MUST be documented in a business plan and preached to the whole company. It is NOT enough to simply say we are $50m this year and will be $70m in two years. The plan MUST provide absolute detail as to how the goal will be achieved. Our plans could be termed as “anal” in nature but it worked.  This level of detail must be visible to everyone in the entire company and everyone MUST believe the plan is achievable for it to work.

Once the company can tick this box on the plan, the rest is simply down to good old common sense, knowledge and EXPERIENCE. The reason it took Navman ten years to get to $4m in sales was our lack of relevant experience in the market we planned to operate in. We could do the development and manufacturing bit but we didn’t understand how distribution worked within our market.

New Zealand is building a successful track record in several international markets with its wine exports. We can clearly see that the successful companies are the ones who understand the power of brand and channel. Unfortunately the old “colonial, sell it at the gate” culture still exists and if left to run rampant, this can destroy the good work of the few stars who lead the pack.

New Zealand has a lot of great small businesses. Their greatest weakness is lack of ability to commercialise on a global scale. The brand and channel issue is one of the biggest stumbling blocks but lack of general business experience is our greatest weakness. Unfortunately you cannot learn this stuff at University and even if you could the typical Kiwi business owner would not be able or willing to take the time to learn it in the lecture room. The ONLY way to gain this knowledge is to hire in people who have “been there and done that”.

I truly believe that Kea is in a position to provide the means to connect Kiwi’s around the globe together. That is not to say that the guy you want to hire in Brazil will be a Kiwi but there is a good chance that there is a Kiwi in Brazil who will be able to connect you to a “head hunter” who specialises in finding the people you need.

The other key factor to Navman’s success came from building new business units that levered off, and added leverage to the business we already had. When we were making one million GPS receivers a year our cost for GPS chip sets, LCD displays and all the other components that made these products were about as low as they could be on a global scale. This allowed our marine electronics business to become VERY competitive. It provided our Navman Wireless division with the lowest possible cost solution in the world allowing the company to become the largest fleet tracking operation in the UK within three years of its market launch.

This “leverage” strategy is something the Japanese are masters of and something Kiwi companies need to learn. We are not naturally good at working together but when we travel and work overseas we begin to understand the power of the collective mentality. If we can translate what we do on the rugby field to business we will have a better chance of creating more Navman’s in the future.

There’s a story told about Sir Walter Scott, who was walking with his wife at Abbotsford one day when they came upon a flock of sheep with new-born lambs playing about them. ‘It’s no wonder,’ he said to his wife, ‘that poets from the earliest ages have made the lamb the emblem of peace and innocence.’ ‘They are indeed, delightful animals,’ replied Lady Scott, ‘especially with mint sauce.’

Poetry is all very well, but we in New Zealand are most interested in the mint sauce end of the animal.

The prime ministerial words were actually written by a witty member of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but probably Sir Robert enjoyed reading them aloud, just as he enjoyed making jokes about McCahon paintings, Australians, and trans-Tasman intelligence levels. And surely the butchers — for some reason I imagine them all sitting in freshly pressed, striped aprons — would have chuckled.

Of course, most New Zealanders are pretty pragmatic. ‘What is it for?’ is the first question we ask of something. Or, ‘What does it do?’ The problem with poetry is that we are never quite sure how to answer those questions. There it is, and we meet it at school, and feel mildly anxious, and we worry about how to spell ‘onomatopoeia’, and sometimes a phrase or two sticks . . . but it doesn’t seem to help with the balance of payments. Poems have no weight in the marketplace. You can’t hang one on the wall and watch its value appreciate.

And yet . . . every time we go to a naming ceremony, a wedding, a funeral, a memorial event like Anzac Day, there are the poems among us, at the very centre of our lives. Worth nothing, they are somehow worth everything — particularly during those rites of passage when we are drawn together by the deepest things we have in common.

1981 was hardly one of New Zealand’s glory years. Back then, distance seemed an especially difficult thing. I was living in London, and I remember writing a poem called ‘Zoetropes’ that was full of geographical distance. It was prompted by my more-than-usual need for news from home – the Springbok tour had become a dark, looming cloud on the horizon. But the poem was also about that unsettling thing that happens to all travelling New Zealanders: your homeland vanishes when you leave it. ‘Zoetropes’ begins with a familiar experience: the one where you turn the page of a newspaper – in London or New York or Melbourne – and glimpse a heart-lifting capital Z out of the corner of your eye, only to make the immediately disappointing discovery that the word in question is Zimbabwe, or Ziggurat, or even Zoetropes.

So in London in1981, as the Springbok tour approached, I was desperate for news from home, and found it very hard to get. Occasionally someone would phone; or a package of clippings would arrive in the post. These days I suppose I would be a little troubled, but not in that big, agitating, disconnected way that I recall, because of course the problems of distance have since been modified by the internet and other forms of instant communication. No one now is likely to feel, as one of our first poets, R.A.K. Mason, did back in the 1920s, that New Zealand is a ‘far-pitched perilous hostile place . . . fixed at the friendless outer edge of space’.

Happily, one of the aspects of New Zealand that now travels most easily and immediately is poetry. The quality of our poets has always been one of the country’s best kept secrets, and at last word is beginning to get out. Our poets are published in a range of overseas markets. The English publisher Carcanet has done an anthology of recent New Zealand poetry. There is now an anthology of contemporary New Zealand poetry in German translation, Wildes Licht (Wild Light). There is even a Russian anthology, Land of Seas. My own recent book Lifted was recently published in Italian translation.

And now the web makes New Zealand poetry accessible everywhere. Notable websites include the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre which currently archives the work of over 30 poets, and Best New Zealand Poems, which I’m personally proud to have brought into being. Each year a different BNZP editor chooses the best 25 poems from the last 12 months. There are notes on the poets and their poems (often by the poets themselves), and a whole range of links – for example, to journal and publisher sites – for readers who want to explore a particular poet’s work further. The site has become a shop-window for New Zealand poetry, and has visitors from all around the world.

The 2009 Best New Zealand Poems has just gone on-line, edited by Robyn Marsack, an expat New Zealander who directs the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh.

It’s sometimes said that poets are the antennae of the human race. The two poets who have been chosen most often by the BNZP editors over the past decade are Jenny Bornholdt and Geoff Cochrane. Anyone who wants to keep up with the places the New Zealand imagination is going should be seeking them out.