Favourite innovation that isn’t yours?

Bose Bluetooth earphones. Especially useful with iPhone 7!

Favourite innovation that is yours?

It’s got to be Chocolate Butter. Who’d of thought?

Check out this podcast with Peter and  Idealog’s publisher at large Vincent Heeringa:

Most interesting launch/innovation/trend/thing of the year?

Very taken by Duncan Greive’s ‘Spinoff’.

Lamest launch/innovation/trend/thing of the year?

Has to be Fonterra’s Kapiti rip off of our milk bottle and label.

Most promising New Zealand company/companies?

Since I’m on something of a dairy theme here, Synlait seems to be do things refreshingly well.

Heroes?

I am humbled by the workload and passion of people who are working for non monetary purposes. Sir Rob Fenwick who’s fighting the good fight to save kiwis is a stand out.

Villains?

Call me old fashioned but a company the size of Fonterra should set the standard for good corporate behaviour. Why do they have to keep shooting themselves in the foot? The blood stains are really hard to remove.

Best stoush?

For me, it has to be our stoush with Fonterra. Hopefully it’s going to have a happy ending.

Your own biggest success?

Pretty chuffed with the Marketing Hall of Fame award. An old ad man but a young marketer!

What’s the biggest mistake innovators/businesses will make in 2017?

Thinking it’s like 2016. The rules are changing by the minute and it really will be a case of the quick or the dead.

What do you expect to see in the next five years? 

A real flowering of entrepreneurial companies who find new ways to do new things and the demise of old companies who don’t.

What will be dead in five years?

Cash.

What should be un-invented?

Artificial Intelligence assistants when a phone call would be 100 times more efficient.

Favourite book/TV show/podcast/album/website/magazine/story/performance enhancing drug of the year?

Hero. A biography of T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). A fantastic read.

One piece of tech you’d have on a desert island?

It’s inconceivable that I could be separated from my iPhone. Just hope there’s reception and solar power recharging.

Will the robots become sentient and kill us all? (asking for a friend)

We’re more than capable of doing that all by ourselves. 

As you’re enjoying the great outdoors this summer, The Kiwibank Conservation Dogs will be out there too, hard at work, giving our nature a future.