NZ's success stories

Amid all the talk about the need to lift productivity and the way to bring this about are some spectacular success stories involving New Zealand companies.

Wellington-based Sidhe Interactive, the country's largest and most successful games production studio, put on 15 staff in the past year to lift its complement to more than 100 as it continued to gain market share and become a publisher and IP producer in its own right in the global games market.

The 12-year-old business, a developer of console, hand-held and PC games that sells entirely to overseas markets, received additional funding from TechNZ this year to extend its cross-platform development technology.

TechNZ, the business investment arm of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, says Sidhe's technology is an "exemplar of what New Zealand companies are doing to address global innovation needs".

Sidhe Interactive business development executive Jos Ruffell says the essence to building productivity has been its focus on the international market.

He says the company's success - a 50 per cent increase in revenue in the past year - depended on it recognising the speed of change in the international games market and responding with the appropriate products.

"We are really bullish. We see great opportunities in the next few months. We are moving from a games developer to a publisher and original IP producer."

Masterton-based Breadcraft Wairarapa, a $20 million business that employs 125 people, takes a similar approach to Sidhe Interactive when it comes to lifting productivity: it regularly introduces new products to meet customers' needs.

Part-owner John Cockburn says the company invested heavily in new plant and spent considerable time working closely with customers to give them what they wanted.

"For every 30 ideas that come along we might run with one of them. At the moment we are running on an 80 per cent success rate on these projects.

"Over the past 10 years we have launched 20 new lines. Four of them have been unsuccessful."

His advice to a company wanting to lift productivity: "Be innovative and do what the customer asks you to do."