"Give it a go bro" and the KiwiCard have gone by the wayside but those behind this winter's Entrepreneurs Summit say work continues on bringing productivity-boosting ideas to life.
The event held at Ellerslie Racecourse in May attracted more than 100 businesspeople who brainstormed and workshopped to come up with
five concepts for lifting New Zealand out of the recessionary trough.
"Give it a go bro", a programme to teach Kiwis to think more positively and aspirationally, was voted the top idea of the day. However it has been left on the cutting room floor.
So has the KiwiCard, the idea of giving free flights to overseas tourists who purchased a $10,000 debit card that could only be spent in New Zealand.
Entrepreneur Chris Simmons originally came up with the concept of the summit and said for any of the ideas to come to life they had to reside somewhere.
"There was a lot of energy that came with [give it a go bro] but it was hard to work out where would that one sit and how would you distil it."
He said the numbers currently didn't stack up to make the second most popular idea, the KiwiCard, work.
Simmons and his fellow organiser-entrepreneurs, Tenby Powell and Tony Falkenstein, said Air New Zealand had been supportive of their efforts and talks were continuing with the airline's general manager of marketing Steve Bayliss.
Simmons said as a result of the KiwiCard idea the airline was tossing around ideas such as providing travel to businesses looking to close export deals, and paying to bring over influential people who would promote New Zealand.
Meanwhile work was continuing on the other three concepts to come out of the summit:
* Better co-ordination of the R&D industry to attract investment and commercialise the numerous successful initiatives coming out of the nation's research sector. Minister of Research, Science and Technology Wayne Mapp has so far attended all three of the committee's meetings, the entrepreneurs said.
* A Kauri Academy to hothouse New Zealand businesses past the notorious "bach, boat and Beemer" stage. Powell said this initiative was aimed at taking SMEs which had reached the $5 million earnings mark up to the $50 million level.
* Harnessing the potential of New Zealand's 60 million possums. Possum committee leader Tony Caughey, who is also chairman of the Enterprise New Zealand Trust, said the intention was to examine whether there were ways of turning the $80 million spent annually on killing possums into some kind of commercial benefit.
"Give it a go bro" and the KiwiCard have gone by the wayside but those behind this winter's Entrepreneurs Summit say work continues on bringing productivity-boosting ideas to life.
The event held at Ellerslie Racecourse in May attracted more than 100 businesspeople who brainstormed and workshopped to come up with
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