Finds out why a remote approach to IT maintenance is better than insurance.
There’s often a misconception that maintenance support services are only about onsite repair or just an insurance policy for when something breaks. Today, a proactive approach means that more than two-thirds of service calls can be resolved remotely, preventing problems before they can occur.
Taking the leap - one man's story
James Madelin left investment banking to become a photographer—and found that he’s an inventor, too
Great staff want to be part of their company’s success. Here’s how to get them on board
For employees, every extra skill they can master makes them more employable. For the employer, though, it can be a challenge to get training and development right.
Ubiquitous and pervasive - welcome to the mobile world
Eight years ago nothing much was happening in mobile gadgets: the cutting edge was a ringtone with a tune. But there were those who could see past the unprepossessing mobile landscape.
Forming a design process
Apple, Icebreaker, Fisher & Paykel, Dyson, Formway … it’s design that lifts these companies — and their profits — above the ordinary. But how do you encourage your company to become design-led? A survey of the best-designed companies finds four key qualities that they have in common
Let your actions do your talking...
Traditional marketing is all talk and no trousers. Your customers don’t care what you say, they want to know what you do. By James Hurman
Doing buisness at a slower pace...
Londoners refuse to be rushed by an upstart from the colonies, but you can do business at British pace.
Making sustainability equate to sensibility
Air miles? Bah. Branka Simunovich’s olives are carbon-positive, thank you, and she has the papers to prove it. Andy Kenworthy visits a very ambitious eco-venture
Low Carbon... High Dollars
The shift to a low-emission, low-carbon world is introducing high-value business opportunities.
From wheelie bins to world leading cleantech
If you saw students hoofing wheelie bins of water from a roof, you'd probably write it off as another hilarious jape by the underemployed. But back in 1996 when Greg Yeoman, Mike Hannah, Brendan Poole and their co-conspirators were tipping bins, they weren't targeting unsuspecting passersby. They were busy testing the EnviroPod, a storm-water drain filter they had invented.
An emerging computer model—cloud computing—has evolved to address the explosive growth of Internet-connected devices, and to complement the increasing presence of technology in today’s world.
Ideas for peanuts...
Ideas are free—and ideas people can be bloody cheap too. Gena Tuffery looks behind the corporate façade and meets the creative interns getting by on company handouts and whatever’s left in the fridge.
Standing on the backs of giants? Watch out you don't fall
You've got a hot new idea for a product or service that will slot neatly into an existing infrastructure. You can create it quickly and build on someone else’s audience. But are you living on borrowed time? Will your carefully developed and devised offering survive, if it piggybacks on someone else’s service and is at the mercy of business decisions that you have no influence over?
Physical? That's old school
Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs. Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?
Tapping into the biggest markets around
Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn … what’s the big deal? If markets are conversations, social networks are the biggest markets around. Here’s how (and why) to get involved, without getting in the way
Finally, a nurse who truly has no qualms about changing bedpans: a robot
If the idea of R2D2 changing your bedpan isn’t appealing, you can be sure it’s one job that nurses won’t miss. It’s just one of the tasks that a robo-nurse is being designed to do in a collaboration between the University of Auckland and local artificial intelligence experts at Robot-Hosting.
How to extend your data centre lifespan and reduce energy use.
Greening the IT function is only one aspect of Green IT explains Graeme Philipson. It is important to minimise IT’s power consumption, but the real advantages come with IT’s ability to help reduce the carbon footprint of the whole organisation.
Looking on the outside, to improve on the inside
Even companies with great ideas usually don't know how to analyse them. Bill Wilmot makes sure ideas get scrutinised - ruthlessly. Here's how he helps kill bad ideas and give great ideas a tune-up
Some experts are calling cloud computing a paradigm shift in technology.
Going a round (or two) with Kevin Roberts
North & South magazine once facetiously asked if Kevin Roberts was God. Others just thought he talked too much, and plenty regard his Lovemarks books as too eeerk for words. But after 850,000 book sales and 11 years in As Saatchi & Saatchi global CEO, Roberts is still winning business, singing the praises of New Zealand, and seeing love and rugby everywhere. Vincent Heeringa talks to the world’s most irrepressible optimist, starting with why he’s right and Vincent is 850,000 times wrong
Sustainability is a long road, but we need to start our journey on it now
Today's 'eco-friendly' designs just delay the inevitable. It's time to plan ahead...
Made OF New Zealand, Made IN China
Although its name suggests serenity, there’s nothing calm about St Lukes Shopping Centre in Auckland. That concrete retail rotunda heaving with people lugging kids, groceries and chain-store bags jammed with stuff? Yeah, that’s the one.
Rhubarb Zoo is proving that animation is pure adult’s play
Who would have thought that infrastructure was the most interesting part of the Internet? Welcome to cloud computing, where big pipes and big iron create a second—no, third—generation of Internet entrepreneurs.Matt Cooney asks: could New Zealand become the land of the long net cloud?
Breaking third world poverty, with first world money and smart ideas
It takes a Kiwi to think of something this nutty. Take left-over meat from New Zealand abattoirs, mix it with unwanted kiwifruit pulp, dry the result, package it into a sachet, and then sell it as super-food to the world’s poor and starving. Oh, and as a sideline, flog the sachets at a premium to Californian body builders.
Linking genius and insanity
Throw away your de Bono, ignore your critics and embrace your appalling personality. Sometimes it pays to be crazy—just look at Picasso. That’s the advice from Dr Margaret Boden OBE, author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms and lecturer at Sussex University on the process of creativity. Lauren Bartlett seeks the science behind Boden’s ideas
A new kind of philanthropy says it's wrong to lose money
Quick test. Who said this: “I think it's wrong to ask people to lose money.” Warren Buffett? Donald Trump? Bob Jones?
Try Bill Clinton. The former US president spoke those words during a press conference in May for his own charitable organisation, the Clinton Foundation.
Leading from the front
Want to be a good boss? Consider stroppy chef Gordon Ramsay your role model.
Harder than getting blood out of a stone…
New Zealand venture capital desperately needs a hit - an investment that pays back, big time. Without it, our venture capitalists struggle to fund creative Kiwi companies. Mike Booker discovers why we're sadly used to hearing 'no'.
Returning the favour...
Our kiwifruit industry was built by combining the Chinese gooseberry with Kiwi know-how. Now a New Zealand company is returning the favour, working with Chinese growers to raise the plants needed for its natural, healthy sweetener. But they need to step carefully, reports Bette Flagler—Big Sugar is watching
Give your people the potential to bloom, cut 'em loose
Some companies have a secret place, hidden from day-to-day business, where adventurous staff plan a radical makeover.
Virtual manufacturing anyone?
If you can draw your idea, Wellington startup Ponoko can probably make it—and find buyers for it too. Peter Griffin meets the New Zealanders at the forefront of the handmade revolution
The value in diversity
Want a short cut to innovation? Employ the United Nations. Or at least fill your office with people of diverse ethnicities, genders, disciplines and histories, and let them muddle their way to the bank. That’s the advice from Swedish-Cherokee-African, Harvard-educated, entrepreneur Frans Johansson. He’s also author of The Medici Effect, a best-selling business book about the power of organised diversity. Johansson dropped by Idealog HQ (well, the lobby of the Sheraton) to explain how by emulating the Medici family’s ability to combine diverse influences—from Dutch artists to Indian mathematicians—companies can spark their own private Renaissance
Getting smarter, one generation at a time
Of all the differences between people, one factor has a greater bearing on income than any other: intelligence. And IQ scores show that each generation is getting smarter. Jamie Cullinane examines the rise of the smartocracy
Why success, and those who achieve it, sometimes comes from the strangest places
Think you're talented? Creative? Dare we say it: outstanding? Good for you - but if Malcolm Gladwell is right, that'll only get you so far. In his latest book, Outliers, Gladwell turns his focus on the very nature of success itself, making some intriguing connections between The Beatles and Bill Gates, Canadian pro hockey players and Asian rice farmers. He's looked at the traits of successful people and found what they have in common: hard work and happy circumstance. So how do the merely talented get ahead?
Re thinking ownership and copyright
Cory Doctorow makes a living from his words, though he happily gives them away for free. The founder of the über-influential BoingBoing blog and author of sci-fi books like Eastern Standard Tribe and Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, he’s at the forefront of the cyber-revolution and a merciless critic of the megacorporations that seek to control creative content.
There's more to life than money... what REALLY makes us happy
Money can’t buy us love. The Beatles knew it, but it took a recession to remind the rest of us: what really makes us happy has little to do with money. Even better, what makes us happy is good for the whole country. Good explores the new economics of happiness and discovers that changing the way we think about wealth and success can have a profound impact on our lives
I’ve got some good news and some bad news about your computer.
The good news is that a new idea called “virtualisation” can reduce the number of computers you need to buy and operate, which will reduce the complexity of your organisation and trim your electricity consumption.
… but tech is only part of the problem. As hybrids, electric vehicles and hydrogen-powered cars arrive in showrooms, the biggest barriers to adoption are infrastructure and politics—and both can be solved with some judicious marketing. Idealog meets a New Zealander who is helping US President Barack Obama with his alternative fuels plans, and another laying the groundwork for our fossil-friendly future. The catch: one is pushing plug-in electric, the other hydrogen. Is there room for both?
Direct from the horse's mouth
The ETS is being renegotiated, the biofuels obligation has been repealed, old-style light bulbs are back … the National-led government has undone a fair bit of environmental legislation in its first few months in charge. We asked Hon Dr Nick Smith, Minister for the Environment, what he plans to replace it with. By Nick Smith
Getting real about the environment
Like it or not, the landfill economy is coming to an end—and New Zealand needs to get real. Gena Tuffery uncovers the Kiwis who are doing us all a favour and living up to our undeserved reputation. Just don’t use that ‘G’ word
A perambulatory post-mortem
Mountain Buggy looked like a model company for New Zealand’s design-led future, yet in January it reported debts of $22 million and the receiver was called in. What happened to one of our brightest export prospects? Mike Booker discovers why the wheels fell off.
