Auckland New Ventures helps people be their own boss and grow a successful business, writes ADAM JONES.
Ideas are easy. Turning ideas into a viable business is much harder, and part of the trick to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Auckland New Ventures provides a number of services that help businesses start up, run successfully and grow.
These schemes work with both new businesses and small to medium-sized businesses that need help.
Often, the first point of contact with Auckland New Ventures is the business advisory service. This comprises a one-hour advisory session, funded by Auckland City Council.
Business facilitator Colette Campbell sees people at different levels in these sessions, from those wanting advice on inventions, products and services, to businesses needing help to expand.
This initial advisory session often leads to a course with New Ventures.
Auckland New Ventures specialises in helping unemployed people with entrepreneurial ideas to bridge the skills gap.
The "Be Your Own Boss" course, run in conjunction with Winz, involves 120 hours of tutoring advice for unemployed people who have a business idea. The course helps them prepare a business plan for their new venture.
A condensed version of this - the Small Business Skills course - runs three evenings a week over three weeks. This course is made up of a mixture of people: those already in business upgrading their skills, Winz clients and people with new business ideas.
Auckland New Ventures Biz divisions manager John McLean says: "Be Your Own Boss is about confronting the idea and going into it in some depth. It's about sitting down and writing a business plan ... sometimes for the first time in their life. That's a challenge in itself."
Auckland New Ventures runs the Industry NZ Biz training courses for Auckland's North Shore. These courses help a business upskill, plan marketing and finance operations.
Mr McLean is excited about Auckland New Ventures' role in developing small and medium sized businesses.
"We've come from pioneering stock and we are a do-it-yourself nation. So we get to this certain point where our business is running okay, but we can't grow because we are doing everything ourselves. So this requires another way of managing the business to make that steep change."
This is the aim of the business services cluster development they are trialing.
Mr McLean believes that the major economic growth in New Zealand can come from developing small business using strategies like cluster development and Biz training.
"If you look at setting up a business, the intervention [required] to get a small start-up with one employee to have $100,000 turnover with a $20,000 net profit - with the same intervention in a business with five employees, you will get a $500,000 increase for the same effort."
The Auckland New Ventures scheme offers continuity of advice for businesses as they evolve. This is a concept Mr McLean believes is important.
"There's myriad advice out there ... each bit of it's useful, but because it's isolated, it tends to be fragmented." Fragmented advice can drive an idea into the "too hard basket".
An area of concerned identified by the Gem report is a lack of educators with practical knowledge. This is where Auckland New Ventures excels.
As Mr McLean says, he's "always been in business" and, like many of the New Venture staff, still runs one.
In line with Gem report findings, both Mr McLean and Ms Campbell agree that New Zealand is poised to take advantage of an entrepreneurial climate. Every day they see people who accept change and the risk of starting up a business.
Ms Campbell says, "New Zealanders have the attitude that they have the right to be in business".
Both agree that turning this climate into sustainable economic growth requires the development of sound business practice.
In line with the Gem report, they say the keys to entrepreneurial success are research, education, passion, commitment, appropriate resources and a background knowledge of the chosen industry.
In terms of offering programmes that turn ideas in to viable business, Auckland New Ventures are definitely in the business of helping entrepreneurs commercialise their innovative ideas.
Where to from here
Auckland New Ventures
Tel: 0 9 366 0860
BIZinfo
Tel: 0800 424 946
Enterprise Development Association
Tel: 0 4 473 9984
Entrepreneurial Success Programme
Tel: 0 9 415 5999
Industry New Zealand
Tel: 0800 224 480
Te Puni Kokiri
The Ministry for Maori Development
Tel: 0800 949 997
Technology New Zealand
Tel: 0 9 912 6730
Unitec Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Tel: 0 9 815 2945
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