CEO Aaron McDonald describes Centrality as creating a $400m global venture and platform model to enable hi tech startups to get to market faster, grow faster and decentralise the internet.

The six startups in their first accelerator were pitching to a packed house of entrepreneurs, Government-types, corporates and most importantly - investors.
Co-leader of the Green Party and Minister James Shaw opened the Demo Day with a message that creativity is at the heart of the Aoteaoroa New Zealand digital economy. The ventures did not disappoint.
Technology is now New Zealand’s third-biggest export sector, bringing in more than $16 billion a year in overall revenue - and obviously offers some clear advantages over primary produce in terms of environmental impact.
The six teams covered a broad range of big market opportunities across reinventing global film distribution; food provenance; creating an indigenous identity and community platform; carbon credits; household payments and marketing insight.

CinemaLogic
A B2B contract management platform that automates the supply of cinema releases to theatres and their audiences globally. It provides studios with real time insights during the cinema release lifecycle, delivering trust, transparency and governance to the theatre industry. The company holds the cinema release licence for major Hollywood studios in New Zealand and is looking for $1m with the promise of being in market with at least one studio this year

Āhau
Built on Māori values, Āhau is a decentralised digital identity platform to help connect you with who you are, where you are from and what you do. Co-founder Ben Tairea said the Māori economy growing at twice rate of NZ economy and is now worth $50 billion. The platform focuses on the 61 post-settlement iwi, which spend a total of $7.9m annually on shareholder management platforms. Āhau's solution  reduces costs by 40% and doubles iwi engagement. The team have secured three tribal adopters with 65,000 users and is aiming to go global after year two. Āhau are asking for $375k. (Disclosure: I have been advising Āhau)

CarbonClick
CarbonClick makes carbon offsetting simple, transparent and traceable for all businesses and their customers. CEO and co-founder Jan Czaplicki was involved in creating Air New Zealand’s digital carbon-offset solution. A lot of businesses want to offer carbon-offsetting to their customers but lack the resources of a larger company to build a bespoke solution. With CarbonClick, consumers can use their purchasing power to back carbon friendly products and services. Czaplicki is aiming to get 20 companies using CarbonClick in year 1. CarbonClick are seeking $300K

CentraPass
CentraPass is a digital travel ID that saves travellers time and simplifies travel. CentraPass helps tourism businesses personalise their customer experience and capture more value. It will allow fast check-in and provide toursim providers with insights on their customer journey data. CentraPass are looking for $300K.

Pocketful
Pocketful is a social sharing wallet for flats, joint accounts, groups that manages income/spending and budgeting. Founder Steve Adams pitched it as solving those “awkward conversations” around who has, or hasn’t, paid what. Other use cases include person-toperson payments without involving a bank; allowing landlords and property managers to manage tenant requests, book maintenance contractors and schedule inspections – all tracked and recorded through blockchain. Pocketful are seeking $300K.

Yabble
Yabble is an existing business on track to deliver $1.6m revenue this year and which is disrupting the traditional market research industry. Yabble is a collaborative platfrom for research that transforms the speed, transparency and value exchange between brands and consumers. CEO and Co-founder Kathryn Topp talks of the “unethical data iceberg” where major technology and consumer brands harvest billions of dollars from consumers’ data with no return to the consumer. She describes Yabble as “gigging data the ethical way” and used the example of a consumer being able to earn $5 for drinking a bottle of beer. Yabble has already returned $100k to consumers already and is looking to raise $3m in New Zealand before heading overseas.

Āhau have been working in the Centrality Accelerator powered by Lightning Lab, building a platform for tribal groups and indigenous peoples to address some of the major issues around tribal management, cultural heritage, and digital transitioning, while anchoring to matauranga Māori principles and values.
Āhau are using blockchain technology to provide tribal groups and individuals with ownership, access, management, and security of personal data.

There is more evidence out this week that New Zealand businesses aren't doing a good enough job in being seen to be active in regards to sustainability - despite it being a major issue for consumers.

In fact the Colmar Brunton survey Better Futures shows the issue of plastic pollution is an even bigger worry than the cost of living for consumers and more of them are taking action.

In fact 4 out of 10 New Zealanders are highly committed to living a sustainable lifestyle and they want to hear more from businesses.

Despite the fact that sustainable choices and actions are firmly on the agenda of New Zealanders, the survey shows that 7 out of 10 Kiwis are unable to name a brand that is a leader in sustainability.

For businesses it's more than just about marketing and brand  - it also makes good business sense to be sustainable.

McKinsey show that sustainable businesses actually perform better than their counterparts and that developing a corporate culture of sustainability may be a source of competitive advantage for a company in the long run.

They show that high-sustainability companies did better with respect to return on assets (34 per-cent) and return on equity (16 percent).

Obviously many businesses have sustainability objectives in their strategies and nearly 500 are members of the Sustainable Business Network which is the largest and longest-standing organisation dedicated to sustainable business in New Zealand.

Done correctly, sustainability and the digital transformation of businesses should go hand-in-hand.

Atamai's digital benchmarking uses a holistic model to take a whole-of-business approach to digital transformation.

Our approach is based on tried and true principles to drive sustainable outcomes.

Businesses just cannot afford to not be part of this conversation.

Why do I believe this?
Because CEOs are now realising that digital transformation requires a holistic approach and that culture and minsdet change is a key factor for success.
A 2018 Gartner survey reinforces this with an even greater recognition of this from CEOs whose companies have a digital initiative underway.
The survey revealed that CEOs now understand that making their culture more proactive, collaborative, innovative, empowered and customer-centric is what will drive success in digital.

For organisations looking to transform their business understanding the overarching narrative and stories around their Brand or product is critical.
Global companies such as Nike or Patagonia are masters at redefining narratives to differentiate their brands but also to create powerful societal change.
Whether you are a large or small organisation or an individual - the workshop gives you the tools to begin redefining a narrative and to create the powerful stories needed to drive a new narrative.

Participants enjoyed being challenged and gaining the power to be able to deconstruct narratives to drive businesses or cause-focused organisations and groups.

Reach out to know more about how you can leverage storytelling to enhance and accelerate transformation.

Using the benchmarking we create a roadmap to link the current with future aspiration to deliver both digital enablers and digital Key Performance Indicators using design and delivery principles to de-risk your transformation.
A digital transformation is a marathon - but it's a marathon completed in many sprints.
But by taking a holistic view and using an iterative approach delivering on near-term quick wins organisations can start delivering customer - and internal - value faster, with lower risks.

The quest always involves a heroic group who are given superpowers along the way and only reach their magical destination when they are truly transformed.​
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There are five key reasons why companies struggle to transform:

1. The company's reason for being is poorly translated into a brand purpose that really leverages (or even works) in a digital world.
2. The organisational culture is hierarchical, top-down. Everyone looks up for an answer.
3. The operating model is designed for the product manufacturing world. It has a strong middle-management layer who manage silos. Failure is career limiting, and therefore there is not place for risk taking and change is slow.
4. The business runs on an outdated, usually highly-customised technology platform. The focus of the transformation generally comes from this problem. It is a technology-driven mindset: "Once we have the platform, we can truly transform."
5. The organisation does not have a strong (or often any) capability in building good digital products. Products are built from the inside-out - rather than being properly validated with customers from the outside-in.

 ​While there is a hierarchy among these five factors I find it more useful to look at the five digital factors for success more as non-linear chapters in a transformational story - a kind of hero-quest.

In this model there are three strategic transformation choices to respond to digital:

1. Engage with an existing or new customer base through a digital distribution strategy. The channel is often siloed and run by a "digital department" and exists alongside other channels and often supported by manual processes.
2. Allow digital to drive simplification and automation of the core business which in turn creates highly innovative customer experiences and Brand differentiation. Air New Zealand has been a digital pioneer in the airline industry and aspires to be leading digital airline globally.
3. Digital drives the business strategy. These are digital businesses where they operate a business strategy for a digital world, as opposed to a digital sub-strategy. Organisations currently succeeding in this have primarily been blessed by being born-digital and taking a tech company approach to previously non-digital markets, like Xero with accounting and Trade Me in marketplace and classified advertising, But the reality for businesses over the next decade is that to grow and thrive in a digital world they will need to transform into a digital business.