Business Is Boring

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. In our regular Business Chat special, Simon Pound speaks with Fleur Francois, director at New Zealand’s national metrology institute and Karyn Scherer, senior copywriter at Callaghan Innovation.It's been a big year in international measurement. A number of the big measures we rely on every day, and for the accurate use of more things in our lives than you might imagine, have swapped out, or are in the process of doing so. The kilo is a famous measure, kept under glass and lock and key in France,that’s changing from an actual lump of metal to being kept by quantum measurements based off fundamental laws of physics so as not to change.It turns out that up to now every now and again the kilo mass shifted and so would all measurements, kind of bananas to think of it.It's also been a big anniversary for another standard, standard time. Did you know, and I'm not trying to catch you out if you didn't, that NZ was the first place in the world to adopt standard time, adopting Greenwich mean time as our base measure, before England even did. It's a great story of parochialism and vision all at once, and we were a staggering 15 years ahead of anywhere else. The 150th anniversary of that also passed this year. So to chat time, measure and the nature of reality, we're joined on the pod by Fleur Francois, director at New Zealand’s national metrology institute, Measurement Standards Laboratory (MSL), and Karyn Scherer of Callaghan Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to CEO of EzyVet Hadleigh Bognuda.The move to the cloud has been called the biggest thing to happen to business since the dawn of the internet. At its best it means little businesses can enjoy the kind of enterprise software advantages the big players used to only be able to get, for small affordable payments, and big companies get enterprise software without enterprise price tags. We’ve seen it in business software, with local hero Xero becoming one of the great SaaS, software as a service companies in the world, and in its wake an ecosystem of possibility emerged. Some of the companies that came after were an obvious move of putting a business tool into the cloud. Others have pulled together a bunch of tools to change every element of how a business can operate. And one of the beauties of the cloud is that you can serve customers everywhere. So where making specialist vet software might not have been viable in an isolated NZ market, now the world is your market.Which is the story of local SaaS star, EzyVet, a vet practice management software solution that has been on a tear, tripling year on year and opening offices in North America, Auckland and London, and 100 plus staff around the world. With 65% of their revenue in North America, and a huge wave of change happening with vets looking for a better way, EzyVet is a fantastic kiwi success story you may not yet have heard of, unless you are in a vet clinic, and then you most definitely should have, To talk the journey, sustainable scaling and the future, CEO Hadleigh Bognuda joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few years after studying science, but beginning a career in cosmetics and lingerie and film, today’s guest was reading a science journal for fun. A line about the properties of native bee excreted nesting material caught her eye and made her wonder if it might make a good bioplastic.What for some might have been a quick muse, for Veronica Harwood-Stevenson became a mission and then company. It’s taken her across New Zealand and Australia to find specimens, had her duck venomous locals and bushfires, found collaborators and funding and led her to identify and be working to commercialise under the name Humble Bee.To chat the journey, inspiration and making that action, Veronica joined the podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Did you know that every day around New Zealand more than $2 million of theft occurs that no one even bothers to report?Petrol station drive offs, little thefts at supermarkets, things under $1000 generally don’t even get reported to the police - and if they are the police often can’t do much about them.Well a few years ago a lawyer and his co-founders saw this issue and thought there must be a better way. They set up a company that became Auror - helping to link evidence of shoplifting or small-scale crime between the retailer and the police. It’s helped lead to some pretty amazing stats: 55% fewer drive offs at the petrol station Z, and hundreds of recidivist shoplifters brought to justice. The product works by making it easy to report and connect the dots on organised retail crime, and even helps prevent crimes by integrating with license plate recognition.It’s a company that’s attracted top-class investment and top-class customers with most of our major retailers here and more and more in Australia and across the world using the service. To talk the journey, the decision to throw it all in as a successful lawyer and chase criminals, and the fact that so much crime would just go unreported, Auror CEO Phil Thomson joins us Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2018 can feel quite progressive and doing pretty well, if you’re in the right bubble. But in many ways oh boy there’s a lot still to do. Like with tampons and pads. Half the population needs them, yet they are mainly made with synthetic and potentially harmful materials, and have attached to them in some places  luxury taxes and in many places a stigma around them. Which is where the Organic Initiative comes in, to provide an organic alternative and foster the movement to recognise safety and health around periods. A radically sustainable and progressive company it was co-founded by today’s guest a few short years ago. Helen Robinson is a wildly accomplished founder of a start-up - having been CEO at Microsoft New Zealand in some of its most dominant days, a board member of nationally and globally significant bodies like ATEED and a winner of the Supreme award at the Women of Influence awards. To talk the journey and the mission, Helen joins us by phone from America where she is with Oi/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Nat Cheshire, self-described 'fake architect'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Sandy Mamoli, author of Creating Great Teams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you look at the digital landscape there has been a lot of innovation - Netflix has changed the way we watch things, we are in a golden age of television, movies keep getting bigger and bigger, musicians have a direct relationship with fans through the internet, and books, well books have moved to the digital age in much the same way they have always been, words on a page, except these days, it’s an electronic page. It’s an odd thing, that something so loved, books, hadn’t taken advantage of the possibilities of the internet to become more interactive, engrossing or amazing. Well, one company in Aotearoa saw this opportunity and have built a company that makes exciting Digital experiential books, and who have a focus on using modern methods to give traditional languages new avenues to grow and connect today. They have published wonderful app based titles, like Ngarimu, that brings a graphic novel to life with sound and music and texture, revitalised classics, like the Hairy McLarey books, and have just announced a partnership to help create a hub in Australia to help bring new appreciation to endangered local languages.To talk about the mission, the work around the world and fostering te reo through new tech, CEO Steven Renata joins me now, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. In our monthly Business Chat special, Simon Pound speaks with Maria Slade, business editor at The Spinoff, and Karyn Scherer, senior copywriter at Callaghan Innovation about the business stories making the news that month. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to Lisa Taouma, producer of Fresh.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices