The company would seek investments in the region because they held no relevance to iwi members, who would then miss out on the multiplier effect of investments.
"Where iwi wants to go, that's where the asset holding company should be going. They know our business and we know their aspirations. That is how it should be."
He was speaking at recent hui for Ohanga o Takitumu hui, an economic campaign for social change through growing businesses and better using Maori assets.
While the iwi took the sea-based claims, its hapu have pursued land claims independently, with a pending total of $486million.
Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated chairman Ngahiwi Tomoana said economic development was an integral part of iwi culture.
"Trading was part of our tikanga as we zigzagged through the Pacific and landed here," he said.
Ohanga o Takitimu's aim was to again normalise talk about business and economic development "everywhere our people congregate".
It is the regional arm of Crown Maori Economic Growth Partnership.
Maori Development Minister Te Ururoa said the Partnership was formed on the back of the Maori Party's limited agreement to support the National Government after the last election.
"In terms of cash, in terms of building capability and capacity, it is really exciting where we are going and what is available," said Taria Tahana, partnership co-ordinator for Te Puni Kokiri, which is implementing the programme with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
Liz Te Amo, director of Maori business at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, said nationally Maori controlled 12 per cent of sheep and beef, up to 50 per cent of the fishing quota, 10 per cent of the kiwifruit industry and 40 per cent of land under forests and up to 10 per cent of national dairy production.
"If Maori have 10 per cent of the kiwifruit industry, the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we get to 20 per cent?" she said.
"If Maori own 40 per cent of the land underneath the forests in this country and it is all going out across our ports, currently to China, what is the opportunity for Maori? We have lost a lot of processing jobs out of this country because the wood now goes out as logs.
Iwi collectives "need to stand up and say we want something different".
There were opportunities in new technologies: The world's largest taxi company (Uber) owned no taxis and the world's largest accommodation provider (AirbnB) owned no hotels.
The Growth Partnership would concentrate on the regions "and what your aspirations are".
"We can't avoid the primary sector, and we don't want to, because we have to build on our natural advantages and what we have today."
She said the message from Ngai Tahu's growth was "get moving". The iwi had grown land and sea settlements to more than $1 billion
"The message there? Get moving. Make a start."
"How do we power up the next 55 settlements off the back and off the learning of the last 60? How do we make it go faster so it doesn't take everybody 20 years to get up to speed?
She said collaboration would be integral to a successful future.
"In order to get scale, to go to get to markets and raise capital we are all going to have to bind together."
Former Ngai Tahu CEO Anake Goodall, now Meridian Energy director and University of Canterbury adjunct professor, cited a book inspired by a quip from management guru Peter Drucker, titled Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast.
"In the corporate world, irrespective of the amount of capital and sophistication of business models and how clever your predictive models are, the things that defines above all else successful ventures over the longer run are: who are you, how do you hang, what are your value sets and how effective are you are giving effect to them," Mr Goodall said.
"That's culture."
He started life as a freezing worker and became a union leader, helping establish a credit union.
"These part-time, beer-drinking labourers started their own bank.
"We worked out how to mobilise capital amongst ourselves and lend it to ourselves to lift the welfare of our own community.
"I am very much interested in communal capacity, I am very much interested in financial capital; how one uses the other for agreed outcomes.
"These labourers then went and bought a dairy farm. We aggregated capital and bought an economic asset as a group."
They also negotiated shareholding in the meat works.
"In my experience there is literally nothing that can't be done when you're all on the same page and you are focused."
He said a lot of time could be wasted arguing organisational structures - some people had an aversion to corporate structures - but in his experience the most important thing was to identify "what we are trying to do, what is the best available tool to do it. Let's grab that thing and do it.
"There is always time to shed that skin and adopt another structure when a better proposition comes along."
He said when he became Ngai Tahu it was held up as a good example of Maori investment "but return on assets was about 4 per cent".
"How can that be a good thing? This is a charitable entity. It pays no tax, has rights of first refusal on some pretty unique opportunities and the best we can do is 4 per cent?"
He said the organisation was now humming with close to 10 per cent return.
By investing back into the company at 4 per cent it would take 20 years to double the iwi's asset base but at 10 per cent it would take seven years.
"In seven years' time that tribal authority is condemned to control $2 billion worth of assets. Within a generation it would become $10billion.
"For multiple-generation communities these are very big multipliers and to the extent that we can tweak/perfect these algorithms then there are very considerable advantages for our own communities."
But if tribal authorities did not "bring the money home" and were not true to tribal values "then I think that is a fail".
He said it was an elusive goal and Ngai Tahu was making progress.
"Even if you have $1 billion this is really hard. If you haven't got $1billion, guess what? It's even harder."
He applauded Denmark's moves to become a nation of renewable energy and organic food.
"That is where we are all headed, the writing is on the wall, why don't we just go there first?
"I think Hawke's Bay could do it. Why not 100 per cent organic."
The name of the Growth Partnership is He Kai Kei Aku Ringa, a phrase Mr Tomoana said he often heard as a child.
"Our parents came through WWI, they came through the Depression and then WWII. They experienced huge adversities.
"The phrase, it doesn't matter how hard things are against you, you have it within your own hands to make a difference.
"So don't be squeamish, don't be shrinking violets, don't be whingers or moaners, get on and do something about it. Because when times were tough, the tough got going.
"When there were food shortages we lived off this land and we lived off the sea.
"In these turbulent times, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, Rogernomics and Ruthenasia, about 30,000 to 40,000 of our people were laid off. It was a time of full Maori employment to 30,000 to 40,000 of our people unemployed within a decade.
"We are still reeling. So the phrase means we have the means with our own hands, and the resilience, to do something about it, to work with our communities, local and central authorities to make things happen alongside the current strands of development."
