Turning big ideas into success stories
Social enterprise incubator the Hikurangi Foundation’s mission is to transform New Zealand’s economy by helping to hatch green businesses. Matt Stewart reports.
THEY’RE looking for profitable community solutions to climate change, and they’re making them happen quickly. In Otago, the Blueskin community wind farm near Dunedin is poised to become the country’s first community-owned electricity company. Turbines should be ready for installation in early 2014, supplying 1000 North Waitati households with an expected 4.5 million kilowatts a year.
Closer to home, Wellington’s Conscious Consumer network awards Scout-style badges to cafes showing commitment to environmentally and socially aware business practices. The accreditation system is soon to be expanded to restaurants, takeaways, bars and caterers as the organisation branches out to Christchurch and Dunedin.
Both projects are funded and supported by the Hikurangi Foundation, set up by the Todd and Tindall foundations in 2008 as a response to climate change.
Founding trustee and new chairman Rod Oram says: ‘‘We have to achieve large-scale change as fast as we can. We call ourselves New Zealand’s incubator for low-carbon social innovation. We’re working within the system but trying to innovate better ways to do that – we’re very much catalysts.’’
Chief executive Alex Hannant says the foundation provides busi- ness mentoring ‘‘on a grand scale – rather than writing a cheque we can bring other parties into play’’.
He has a strong vision of how such a model can change the economy, using the example of the fledgling Blueskin power company. He sees the model growing through the next decade to a point where there will be up to 100 such collectives being wooed by early adopters in the financial sector.
‘‘The first bank that learns how to engage and lend to new enterprise models will have a real advantage – it’s a shift to a new economy.’’
Green commerce has already taken hold with new services, products and models mushrooming across the country but the foundation wants to help cuttingedge ideas succeed quickly.
‘‘If we come in and support them, they can get there twice as fast by enabling people to take those big steps.
‘‘We want to turn big ideas into reality and we want to do it as quickly as possible – essentially that’s the way we’ll change the system.’’
Projects are hothoused using a three-phase plan. First the foundation provides strategic funding covering startup and expansion costs, including salaries, capital expenditure, capacity development, and activities to unlock extra funding.
Second, the foundation acts as an ‘‘angel investor’’, giving management support and guiding strategic development while brokering new partnerships and opportunities. The final stage is to harness specialist individual and corporate expertise to bolster projects and give them a way to navigate the hurdles often thrown up in front of entrepreneurial debutants.
‘‘The hardest one to do is the first – if you don’t know what success looks like, then you’re going to make every mistake in the book.’’