'Give it a go, bro' aims to defeat the doom merchants

"Give it a go, bro" is about giving people the means to change their attitude, say its promoters.

The slogan sums up the top concept to come out of this week's Entrepreneurial Summit, a gathering of over 100 businesspeople tasked with producing five ideas for boosting national productivity.

Motivational speaker, author and medical doctor Tom Mulholland runs the Healthy Thinking Institute, and is one of the campaign's main proponents.

Mulholland said it would be based on the work of Healthy Thinking and would include things like online tools for schools and businesses.

The institute was offering $2.5 million worth of logins to its programme if the equivalent could be put up in Government and/or private sector funding, he said.

Its research had shown that Kiwis were more likely to be "doom merchants" than Australians, for example, and were also very demanding - "people 'should do this, must do that', and that creates a lot of stress".

"Give it a go, bro" was not a feelgood campaign but would teach people to think more positively and aspirationally. "It's about giving Kiwis the tools to change their own attitude, to manage their own emotions."

Mulholland said he had taught the concepts to the employees of clients such as Hilton Hotels and Google.

"If we've proven in the workplace that this campaign can improve productivity by 10 per cent, then we should be able to increase our GDP by 10 per cent, which is $18 billion in 18 months."

Entrepreneur Chris Simmons, who thought up the summit, said that while some feedback had been good others had said: "Is that all they can come up with?"

"It's exactly the attitude that 'Give it a go, bro' is all about really, to say [to] those that are knocking it, we've got to get past that, we've got to say hey, there's got to be a silver lining to every cloud and we've just got to find it."

Geoff Whitcher, commercial director of Auckland University's Business School, said the idea needed to be part of an "entrepreneurship ecosystem".

The university's Spark Entrepreneurial Challenge educated students about the basics of business, ran a competition to encourage them to get their ideas down on paper, and followed that with mentoring, incubation and angel investing to take ideas to the next level.

"It's that whole project if it's to be something sustainable, and it occurs over years of consistency, it's not just a once-off campaign."

Whitcher said having the big idea was the easy bit, the hard part was implementing it.

Andy Hamilton, head of the university's Icehouse business incubator, echoed the sentiment.

"It's not about number eight wire in my view, it's about how we compete and win internationally."

David Walden, chief executive of advertising agency TBWA Whybin, said Kiwis were too reluctant to celebrate their achievements. "At times like these it's not a bad thing to be able to say 'if you've got it, flaunt it'."

POSSUM FUR PLAN SHOT DOWN

One of the top five ideas to come out of the Entrepreneurial Summit was to divert funding from 1080 poisoning of possums into developing a more effective trapping industry.

Greg Howard, of possum leather sports glove maker Planet Green, claims he could export up to 5000 gloves a month if he could get enough supplies of the raw product.

Herb Christophers, senior adviser at the Department of Conservation, said possums were introduced in 1837 with the aim of establishing a fur or pelt industry. "If it was viable as a stand-alone business I think it would be standing on its own two feet by now."

The Government had tried to subsidise it in various ways over the years, with limited success.

Fur recovery and pest control were not the same thing, he said.

DoC worked with fur recovery people who were paid for pest control and for the pelts.

But the areas where DoC wanted possums controlled were not necessarily the most accessible or economically viable for the trappers, for example.

Also it wanted possums culled down to a very low level. "That level of suppression is beyond the economic viability of fur production."

Prices for fur fluctuated but DoC had to keep going "come hell or high water".