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From the Editor

Success strikes in strange ways. Consider this: Taika Waititi makes his debut feature for the local market, telling himself it will be a perfect learning “experiment” for the ‘real’ film to follow. It promptly sells at Cannes to Disney-owned Miramax and Waititi finds himself on the publicity circuit in the US and directing Flight of the Conchords for HBO. The Phoenix Foundation tours the US in support of albums that were released in New Zealand years ago, now on the roster of a tiny American indie, when their soundtrack recording for Waititi’s film is picked up by mighty Hollywood Records. Greg Broadmore loses his dole in an argument with his case worker and starts working instead—at a local company called Weta Workshop. Paul Morrison visits a mate in hospital where a surgeon tells him about problems with operating theatre equipment, and Morrison soon has a new career and his own company.

You’ll find these stories and more like them in this issue of Idealog. They’re a reminder that it’s difficult to plan success and that it’s the accidental events that often spark the best endeavours.

While we fret about the increasing value of our dollar—secretly looking forward to cheaper iPods and spending up a storm at Surfers—it’s easy to feel like our own endeavours count for little when chance encounters and the whims of global markets have such profound impact.

At Idealog, we’ve been banging the creativity drum since our launch, believing that ownership of ideas and increasing the value of our products will protect New Zealand from the whims of commodity prices. And whaddyaknow, it turns out that commodities just might make the country rich again.

It’s great that Fonterra’s payments to dairy farmers are up ten percent, could be up another 50 percent next year and are expected to keep increasing. And if predictions that oil will be found in commercial quantities in the southern ocean turn out to be correct, we could be sitting on a real bonanza.

Those are big predictions, though. And the ‘commodity story’ is, of course, a misnomer. Behind the production and sale of New Zealand milk and (hopefully) oil, sit science, engineering and business smarts—creativity, in other words. Whether we produce wool or cheese or oil or bio-ethanol, that spark of creativity is required at every step.

Matt Cooney
Editor

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