Video highlights: PwC Herald Talks Innovation

The PwC Herald Talks series kicked off this Wednesday morning with a focus Innovation.

Check out the video highlights here.

Around 500 people attended the breakfast event held at SkyCity Theatre to hear from leading experts in the industry on how companies could be more agile and use innovation to improve their business.

The keynote speaker Mark Sagar, associate professor at Auckland University was a crowd favourite, demonstrating one of his projects BabyX - a virtual baby that responded to vocal and visual cues. Sagar's pioneering work on digital faces and characters led to a job in Hollywood and then Weta Digital working on films such as Spiderman, King Kong and Avatar - as well as winning him two academy awards.

Minister for Innovation Steven Joyce opened the event giving advice on what companies needed to do to be global leaders in innovation, focusing specifically on being open to selling globally, encouraging investment and trying to build the number of skilled staff in New Zealand.

"We need to be open to the world," he said. "We're a country of four and a half million people and we're on a pretty small waka in the South Pacific - we're never going to get rich selling to ourselves, we have to get out there, be engaged and be active all around our part of the world."

Business Herald editor Liam Dann closed the morning running a panel discussion with Bruce Hassall from PwC, Rod Snodgrass from Spark, Mary Quinn from Callaghan Innovation and Sagar.

The second Herald Talk will be held on August 26 and will focus on growth in business.