Thinking conference provides an answer - but only for half of us

By DITA DE BONI

A visiting lateral-thinking guru has proposed a solution to boost New Zealand's entrepreneurship - but may have simultaneously put himself offside with around half the population.

Dr Edward de Bono, author of best selling works such as I Am Right, You Are Wrong and Textbook of Wisdom, said an entrepreneur "is usually a mixture of agression and stupidity and women have not been very good at either."

At a Challenger International Conference on Thinking forum held yesterday in Auckland, he suggested one solution to the problem might lie with the Government.

Commenting on visits to Eastern bloc countries, Dr de Bono said there were many female entrepreneurs and business owners there because their Governments removed the risk of start-up failure by providing varying types of financial backstops.

"Perhaps some kind of risk removal system would work in New Zealand and allow more people to become successful entrepreneurs," he said.

The world renown thinker on thinking - wearing one bright yellow and one vivid red sock - joined other leading international thinkers to debate how New Zealand could best go about "innovating from the edge."

Peter Senge, US author of The Fifth Discipline, suggested New Zealand could learn a lot from Singaporeans, a country with no natural resources, space or land. "Singaporeans have only themselves as resources, and look how well they've done. I'm sure there's a lesson in there for this country."

Lifestyles editor of Futurist magazine and database forecaster David Pearce Snyder said all countries, including New Zealand, would need to educate people differently in order to make the best of the "ubiquitous, pervasive cyber-age," and predicted things such as internships, mentorships, assignments and other "active learning" methods would become more necessary as rote learning lost currency.

Neville Jordan, one of the first New Zealanders to have a company, MAS Technology, listed on the Nasdaq, said Kiwis needed to be more creative and look for heroes or "national treasures" that were "more cerebral in nature rather than just physical."

But the most enlivened performance came from cereal king Dick Hubbard, who lugged a piece of number 8 wire and a box of Berry Berry Nice cereal in a battered leather suitcase to the podium to illustrate an animated address to the 200-plus audience.

He said the fact that Hubbard Cereals shipped cereals to the UK, and made rice bubbles by importing rice from Australia, "then filling it with hot air and shipping them back [to Australia]," proved New Zealand could more than hold its own in manufacturing.

"We must be careful not to fall into the trap of being totally captured by the IT age ... of course, we have to understand it but we can't fall into the trap of thinking there are things we can't do, like food and consumer goods manufacturing. We need to market ourselves as a 'can-do' country."

He also had a message for politicians.

"We need visionary leadership. A Helen Boadicea Clark up there in her chariot, leading us forward!"

Correction

In the original version of this story we incorrectly quoted Dr Edward de Bono as stating women lacked the right amount of aggression and stability to be successful entrepreneurs. We regret the error.