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INTRODUCTION: RICHARD LIEW ROLE: EDITOR ORGANISATION: NZ ENTREPRENEUR MAGAZINE Welcome to Innovation Nation 2021, celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week! Innovation Nation is a series celebrating stories of innovation and entrepreneurship from around New Zealand. Innovation Nation proudly supported by: Supporter Spotlight: Offers and services from NZ Entrepreneur supporters!

When Richard McLeod dropped out of University in 2004 and purchased the infamous Captain Cook pub in Dunedin with his childhood ski-racing friend James Arnott, he never imagined that one day he would have co-founded a software-as-a-service company. Now, 17 years later, he believes it’s the right time to take his company, Loaded, to the […]

At just three years old, a Nelson family-owned business that makes snacks from unique New Zealand fruit has doubled its turnover each year, and now employs more than 20 staff across its operations. Dried fruit may sound somewhat boring, but Little Beauties is making it exciting. The startup makes specialty dried snacks from unique New […]

If you’re looking for a different way to experience Queenstown, you’ll find people, places and hospitality on the Check In platform that you would never find from a Google search. Sisters Karmela and Maria Rapata have over 27 years of shared tourism and hospitality experience. In 2012, Maria started a business helping people manage their […]

Educated guesswork isn’t foolproof when it comes to diagnosing a dairy cow with contagious and difficult-to-treat Staphylococcus aureus mastitis – and missing the infection can put the rest of the herd at risk. Thankfully, it was a bit of serendipity that led to founding the company that would develop a novel solution to help combat […]

Facing a lack of satisfaction in his previous role as a teacher, Chris Rodley decided he wanted to build something of his own. So, he sat down with his brother, his dad and a piece of paper. After discarding many ideas, he is now running Snap Information Technologies (SnapIT) which makes cameras and AI hardware […]

After 15 years working in energy sector support, followed by a two-year venture into starting a medicinal cannabis company, Queenstown entrepreneur Owen Darby created Phytrac, a company using cannabis, sunflowers, wood chips, compost, microbes and various plants to restore contaminated land and manage waste streams. Michael Botur reports. In New Zealand, contaminated land is commonly […]

It was a late night ‘what am I doing with my life’ moment that set Sarah McGuinness on a path to lead a group of revolutionaries out into the business world. Their mission? To be the champions of change when it comes to embracing all aspects of wellbeing in the workforce. But it wasn’t quite […]

In the two years since Sarah and Jason Johnson started their entrepreneurial journey, they’ve been on a steep learning curve. With a pandemic, a pivot and a back injury in the mix, the couple have proven that remaining agile is key to business success. Husband and wife team Sarah and Jason are crazy about craft […]

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” – which is exactly what Simon Leckey and Jess Bardsley-Hulme did last year when the global pandemic came knocking. Instead of letting it get in the way of their active lifestyle, they saw an opportunity for a business venture, and now matchfit, nearing launch, aims to help personal […]

Agrifoodtech is a growing segment between agtech (agriculture technology) and foodtech (food technology), that uses technology to disrupt and improve the global food and agriculture industries. Due to increasing pressures on global food supply chains, limited natural resources, a need to fill a human labour gap, and changing dietary demands, the industry is growing. Emerging […]

Starting a food truck in 2012 off the West Coast region of the South Island in a dairy farming town of approximately 200 people is “pretty tricky,” says Alisha McIntosh, owner of Gatherer Wholefoods & Bar. But being adaptable to a changing market has seen their little food truck grow into a coffeehouse in Hari […]