Idealog – July 26, 2019

Idealog.co.nz | The Transformation Issue

003

editorial

EditorElly Strang

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JournalistFindlay Buchanan

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Journalist Courtney Devereux

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Contributors Vaughan Fergusson, Jonathan

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Design director Sacha Wackrow

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Commercial manager Mike Sanders

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ICG managing director Dave Atkins

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RIP OVERNIGHT

SUCCESS STORY

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Elly Strang,

Editor

T

ransformation can be something

humans are naturally averse to, but to

stagnate means almost certain death

for a business. In this era, change

is a constant, whether it’s applying

new technologies, revamping the ways products

are built or sold, changing the way information

is managed, or rethinking a

workplace culture. So how do we

get comfortable with the ever-

increasing rate of change? Perhaps

by accepting that good things take

time, refinement and adaptation,

unlike this digital world would have

us believe.

A study by the Journal of

Economic Psychology found that

resilience – which was defined as

‘hardiness, resourcefulness and

optimism’ – helped to predict

entrepreneurial success. As Vaughan

Fergusson writes on page 81, Vend

was a 10-year ‘overnight success’

and the charity he launched to help

kids learn technology, the Pam

Fergusson Charitable Trust, is a

five-year ‘overnight success’. He says

both of these ventures had multiple

staring-into-the-abyss moments

that didn’t quite get captured in

the narrative. The path to success

is inevitably paved with failure, it’s

just shadowed by the myth of this

overnight success story. In this issue,

you’ll find stories from entrepreneurs

that have gone through all sorts

of transformations: investments,

expansions, exits, personal struggles,

career changes, upheavals to new

countries, and ventures into brand-

new industries. This includes Predict

HQ founder Campbell Brown beating

the pavements in Silicon Valley for

a year before he landed investment

(page 46) to head of delivery at Trade Me Diana Minnee

being told she’d ruined her hopes of a career by getting

pregnant at 17, but persevering anyway (page 71) to

Soul Machines co-founder Greg Cross saying if there’s

one thing he’d do differently, it would be accepting

his mistakes as part-and-parcel of the entrepreneur’s

journey, as they are critical to being good at what you

do (page 38), to Bryony Cole introducing

sextech as a whole new industry to the world

(page 63). These people have all achieved

success on the national and international

world stage, but the common thread

connecting all of them they were tenacious

and kept evolving and moving forward, even

in the face of failure.

This doesn’t mean we should

glamourise failure as a badge of honour,

either. But New Zealand’s attitude to

failure – and its ugly cousin, tall poppy

syndrome – has something to answer for

here in cultivating this myth. So like tech

entrepreneur Robett Hollis’ #RIPTallPoppy

call out, I’m adding another death to the

mix: RIP to the overnight success story. It

does a disservice to all the founders out

there shedding blood, sweat and tears into

their ventures. Instead, let’s reconfigure

what success looks like by being more

realistic about what happens in that

invisible journey towards it.

Speaking of journeys, we're on one to

help revive the wool industry with the New

Zealand Merino Company through the

Wool-ovation Competition. We put it to the

people to reinvent an everyday object using

strong wool and if the huge range of ideas

put forward were anything to go by, this

age-old fibre is definitely in for a resurgence.

View all the finalists on page 40.

The I dealog

team's favourite

current...

Elly Strang

Podcast:Deepak

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Book:To Shake the

Sleeping Self

App:Classpass

Song: Talk it out

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Tash Sultana

Findlay

Buchanan

Podcast:NPR

Hidden Brain

Book:The God of

Small Things

App:¡''6$@$¡'

Song:Yellow Submarine

• The Beatles

Courtney

Devereux

Podcast:Worklife

#@&!18!2;

Book:-2@'!<ࣅ(<¡

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App:Uber Eats

Song:Smooth – Santana

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Mike Sanders

Podcast: Freakonomics

Radio

Book: Homo Deus

App: Foodprint

Song: -2+9e-8&@

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