Browsing: NZTE

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When politicians, brands and businesses all admit to being a little green
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While conspiracy theorists might infer that St Patrick’s Day has some deeper meaning or historically significant origins, we all know that the day is actually just a great excuse to wear green hat, sip on a dark brew and hop around like a leprechaun for a whole day. And given that it has become such a jubilant day of unrestrained revelry, businesses, brands and politicians all take it as an opportunity to get some additional exposure. Here’s a breakdown of some of the interesting St Patrick’s Day-themed efforts that emerged this year.

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Horse’s Mouth: David Kester
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David Kester, director at Thames & Hudson, and the ex-chief executive of the UK Design Council and D&AD, recently ventured back to New Zealand as part of NZTE’s Better by Design CEO Summit and talked about design’s relationship with innovation, how successful companies explore and experiment and how smart companies use design within their business to remain flexible as markets rapidly change. We sat down for a chat.

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‘Be comfortable being uncomfortable’: Claudia Batten’s entrepreneurial advice
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When Claudia Batten speaks about business, it pays to listen. Her career began in corporate law with Russell McVeagh in Wellington, where she specialised in contract, IP and technology law. But as the tech boom boomed, she moved to New York and set up gaming ad network Massive, which was sold to Microsoft in 2006 for a princely sum, with some reports at the time claiming it fetched US$400 million. This year, she left her second start-up Victors & Spoils, the Boulder-based, crowdsourced creative agency she co-founded in 2009 with ex Crispin, Porter & Bogusky directors Evan Fry and Jon Windsor, after French holding company Havas bought a majority stake in the business and positioned it for international expansion. And, as is often the way with serial entrepreneurs, she’s already started work on her next, still rather mysterious project. But she took time out to have a chat with NZTE as part of its advice from entrepreneurs series.

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New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Export Award: Les Mills International
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Every week, there are over 3.1 million attendees at Les Mills International classes in more than 75 countries. And by 2020 it hopes to grow that to over 20 million. So early in 2010, after four years without launching any new group fitness products, it tapped into developing fitness trends and launched CX30, a revolutionary core training programme, and SH’BAM, a 45 minute dance workout.

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The design ties that bind
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As draconian media overlord and Rhys Darby lookalike Vincent Heeringa opined soon after the recent New Zealand International Business awards were handed out this week, the creative economy used to be something that cute, boutique Kiwi businesses talked about. Now, however, design and intellectual property have become an integral aspect of the really big New Zealand exporters as well and they were the two elements that bound many of the winners—and particularly the supreme award-winning Pumpkin Patch—together.

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Adman among World Class New Zealand award winners
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Seven of the country’s leading innovators and entrepreneurs, in fields ranging from biotechnology to the creative arts, were announced as category winners of the World Class New Zealand Awards. And Mark D’Arcy, president and chief creative officer of Time Warner Global Media Group, took the creative industries gong.