Favourite innovation that isn’t yours?

The Impossible Food Burger (YUM), followed by Snapchat’s vending systems for its spectacles.

Favourite innovation that is yours?

I am working on a signals directory so companies can get better at seeing the future unfolding all around them – coming soon to futurecentre.nz.

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

My business partner and I launched the NZ Centre for the Future to help companies who want to create their own futures, and not be victim to changes beyond their control.

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

Pretty much any new business accelerator, it feels like a bubble that should have burst.

Heroes?

One Percent Collective, The Aunties in Auckland and Wellington’s Shoebox Christmas, Edmund Hillary Fellowship.

Villains?

Russian hackers and fake news sites.

Best stoush?

US election.

Your own biggest success?

Sending out an invoice the day we registered our new business.

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

They will improve on their tech when their customers don’t care – i.e. do stuff that makes their own life easier and adds no value to the customer.

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

Printed or grown organs for transplant – a liver specifically.

What will be dead in five years?

Snapchat.

What should be invented and/or un-invented?

Samsung clearly wish the Galaxy Note hadn’t been invented.

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

Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers – a bit of Sci Fi fun; The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly (made me wonder about the intelligence of a dog, or DQ).

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

Solar powered satellite connected smartphone (so I could get off the island).  If I had to stay, then some cute robots that made tools, and cocktails.

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

Nope.

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.