In my role at this newspaper I get to meet quite a few people, including a number of politicians, civic and business leaders.
It often surprises me how inconspicuous and low-key many very powerful and influential people are. This was brought home to me a while back when I hada day off and took one of my daughters to her swimming lesson in Havelock North. Among all the mothers and fathers waiting for their children was a man I had met a few times.
Dressed in a casual shirt and jeans, he was quietly sitting there, minding his own business and talking on his smartphone. He barely got a second glance from the parents, to whom he was nothing more than just another parent. It is true, he was there as a father, but he also happened to be Rod Drury, one of this country's most innovative businessmen.
I do not use the word innovative lightly and can refer to the influential American business magazine, Forbes, to back me up. Mr Drury's cloud accounting firm Xero has topped a list of "most innovative growth companies" prepared by Forbes.
Forbes put the NZX-listed company's "innovation premium" at 91.7 per cent.
"The Innovation Premium is a measure of how much investors have bid up the stock price of a company above the value of its existing business based on expectations of future innovative results," Forbes said.
This is yet another accolade for an outfit that fairly recently became a $1 billion company. The amazing thing is that despite the worldwide acclaim, Mr Drury chooses to call Hawke's Bay home and he has done a lot for our province.
He may, at times, look like another swimming parent or mountain biker on Te Mata Peak, but Mr Drury is exactly the sort of businessman to lead our province out of the economic doldrums - through innovation. They are provincial treasures and we need more of them.
