Ton of talent at entrepreneurial summit

Des Graydon. Photo / Chris Melville

One hundred entrepreneurs are being called to slap down their ideas for pulling New Zealand out of a recession.

The Entrepreneurial Summit, organised by entrepreneur Tony Falkenstein in response to Prime Minister John Key's Job Summit, will be held on April 24 at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Mr Falkenstein said 100 New Zealand entrepreneurs - including Stephen Tindall and Michael Hill - had been invited to bring one idea to the summit.

The first invitations were posted yesterday and the event will be officially announced on Monday.

Ideas should "leverage the opportunities of this recession and create a competitive economy for local entrepreneurs", and could range from infrastructure to education solutions, he said.

He gave the example of AUT's new venture fund, also announced to the Herald yesterday, as an example of an idea that would benefit the economy and New Zealand as a whole.

Mr Falkenstein said New Zealand was known for its fresh thinking and the summit would be a chance to showcase it.

The 100 entrepreneurs will be split into groups of eight and allocated three minutes to formally present their idea.

The best four ideas from each group will be discussed in more detail, with the best 20 ideas presented to the Prime Minister at the end of the session.

Mr Key said yesterday that he thought it was a "fantastic initiative. The Government is all ears for creative ideas".

Mr Falkenstein was "100 per cent" confident that 20 great ideas would emerge from the summit.

"They say desperation is the mother of invention and these times are desperate," he said.

AUT Dean of the Faculty of Business and Law Professor Des Graydon said that, by nature, entrepreneurs saw opportunities where others did not.

"We are known as an enterprising nation but sometimes our best ideas don't get out there."

But Tony Smale of Forte Business Development Advisors said often that was because the "ideas people" did not know how to develop them through to the final stages.

While Mr Smale thought it was a good idea to ask 100 entrepreneurs for intelligent solutions to the recession - "they are at the coalface of it after all" - he hoped that these solutions would be seen through to the final stages.