1 way ticket
I’ve met some amazing people in my time in London - clever, creative and caring peeps who satellite my working world here and around the world. Most of us service similar clients and attend similar events and evenings - like moths drawn to the same flames we’re all doing day jobs that pay the bills whilst we try and get a handle on what’s next and how we might creatively support the acceleration towards ‘better’ for all.
The thing is in 2-3 months I’m saying goodbye for good.
It’s been coming - at least for the past 3-5 years - the balance of desire to be intellectually stimulated by ‘London client’ challenges slowly shifting towards ‘where do we want to be living’, ‘how do we want to be living’ and importantly ‘what do I REALLY want to be doing’. And so New Zealand.
I left my kiwi home in 1997, single, on a 1 way ticket. I had no plan beyond surfing through Indonesia for a few months then to London. I had family in the UK, so thought I would drop in, say g’day, then make my way to the south of france where I’d always dreamed of surfing and living. I made it to France - or should I say ‘make it to France’ - every year for a few weeks of waves. Other than that, the past 14 years have all been in London!
Given we’re soon leaving, I’ve been thinking lots about what first made me stay - and then what kept me here.
What keeps a kiwi guy who was training to be a forest ranger, studied zoology, played in the NZ outdoors everyday and then decides to put down in a place like London for the best part of 15 years?
I think I can answer it with 2 words - curiosity & opportunity.
I was 27 when I left and I hardly knew what creativity was - if you’d have asked me ‘am I a creative person’ I’m pretty sure I would have said no. I arrived here fairly broke and so I had to earn some pounds to afford to carry on to southern europe. I blagged my way into the creative industries (that is a story for another time) freelancing in marketing and design for the likes of Rimmel, Safeways (Morrisons now I think), Deloittes etc. I ended up on a long term stint at Ray Ban, eventually becoming the European Marketing Manager. This then opened the door to join an innovation agency (again that’s another story) that was doing great work at the time - WhatIf. None of these things could have ever happened for me in NZ. It was through these things that I discovered a little expressed talent for intellectual curiosity and the opportunities to apply this talent in the form of enterprise innovation for multinational clients.
In other words, the mix of eco sentiment and quasi environmentalism I was involved in pre leaving NZ was 100% replaced by commercial creativity in the form of NPD Innovation; new product development. WhatIf opened me to a whole new industry of creative endeavour across a multitude of paying clients; government, education, FMCG, oil, retail, charity, entertainment, insurance, booze etc etc - you name it, we worked for them. I rapidly progressed through the disciplines of innovation including pure NPD ideas, creativity training and into the new realms of cultural transformation towards increased innovation capabilities. Turned out my newly found abilities were a perfect fit for this kind of work - curious about everything, an innate ability to spot commercial opportunities and then collaborate with clients how to best take advantage of them to drive competitiveness, profit etc (jeesh that all feels so 90’s doesn’t it!!)
And then me and WhatIf parted company - yes, another story there (BBC Board Top Dog USA Tour 2001 - what doesn’t kill does make for stronger). I left WhatIf on another kind of 1 way ticket - I just left, I didn’t know what I was going to do or who I would do it with. I simply knew I couldn’t work that way anymore - and that there must be something better out there to do. What I didn’t know was that I was desperate to find a real thing I could do that would also provide me a real reason to believe it was worth doing.
I had been leading a lot of ‘core purpose’ work with large organisations - maybe it was this that put the mirror up to my own lack of one! Either way, I set up under ‘IndustryApproved’ (my 1st enterprise idea from back in 94′), opened a cheque account, brought a £60 desk from the market (which I still have), got a new Mac and waited for something to happen.
The rest is history really; 10+ years busting out of a rigid, formulaic approach to innovation and trying new things. I worked mostly with ‘new to innovation’ clients, translating ‘innovation’ into new areas (Radio, Film, TV, Music etc), some for gratis and a few (large) enterprise projects under my own steam. IndustryApproved started to coalesce into an approach people could experience as DIY accelerated innovation; rediscovering their own capacity for creativity, building confidence in it and increasing their capabilities to apply it. Seems I became super curious about people’s lack of belief in their own creativity, their inability to spot the obvious opportunities around them for better performance both commercially and culturally. IndustryApproved became a nomenclature for a way to achieve this - that anybody in any industry could get hold of, use and benefit from.
That was then.
This is now. The world has shifted beneath our feet. The great recession is still with us. And radical, critical climate change is just over the horizon. We’re being called to change our carbon consuming ways in ways that we’re still not quite ready for - but will soon have to.
And I think about what part I can play in all of this that can do some good. To again find something to do out of all that I have done - and a reason to do it. And you know - I have. I think this is the 1st time I’m putting it out there. I’m about to make a new creative leap.
IndustryApproved has evolved to become a holistic ‘approach’ for accelerated innovation; for the getting of better ideas, by better creative people in a better, innovative culture…faster. I’ve spent the past 4 years in trial and error, testing and developing a portfolio of creative resources and materials that can facilitate people and organisations building DIY innovation. I’ve spent a large part of my daughters inheritance - with as yet not a whole lot to show for it. It’s been commercially and emotionally painful to create a suite of tools, only to realise most don’t know how to use them. As my talented mate Mr Connell would say, we gave them a hammer and nails but no plans for what to actually build or how!! I’ve rightly focused on how to support people ‘doing’ innovation - the natural development is to now add ‘learning’ to better support ‘learning thru doing’ innovation.
Which brings me to today.
I tweeted this morning that I’ve just purchased the metaphorical matches to start a scrub fire on IndustryApproved. I want to start anew. I need fresh, green shoots - as do others. It’s posited by many learned people that the way out of our these collective crises we face and will face - doing business in a recession and growing in sustainable ways - is ‘innovation’. True enough. But we’re not yet seeing any kind of democratised approach to the expertise of innovation manifesting across industries and organisations.
Well that’s where I can play - and turns out it’s exactly where my heart is, my purpose is and my talents lay. And not just because it’s what I ‘want’ - the best of ideas connect with audiences because there is real ‘need’ as well as ‘want’ right!!
I’m taking IndustryApproved home to New Zealand. I’m going to reconnect with the natural world I grew up in and use that connection to nurture my efforts of articulating the expertise of IndustryApproved innovation - the creative discipline of art & science - in ways that truly help all people who have the ‘need’ and ‘want’ to rediscover their creative talents & build their capabilities for applying them - no matter what industry they are in.
The timing is perfect; NZ is on a push to build it’s innovative equity and my wife and I are keen that our family grow up ‘kiwi’. And if it’s true that real innovation happens at the edges (I know what they mean but it’s not always the case - lots of times it’s staring us in the face) then what better place to go live my purpose and serve others than from the edge of the world that is my beautiful home ‘Aotearoa’.
I’ve bought us 1 way tickets.











