Give it a go, bro!

At a recent New Zealand Entrepreneurial Summit one of the top 5 ideas was to launch an attitude programme with the slogan 'Give it a go, bro!' with the aim of creating a sense of national pride and identity.

Anyone who has worked in improvisational theatre would recognise this as one the basic principles of improv - say yes!

"There are people who prefer to say YES, and there are people who prefer to say NO. Those who say YES are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say NO are rewarded by the safety they attain. There are far more NO sayers around than YES sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the other." Keith Johnstone

New Zealand needs more YES sayers!

Entrepreneurial Summit - Creativity at Work

Put 100 entrepreneurs in a room for a day under the following conditions:

• ideas had to be submitted prior to the day


• any idea must be able to be implemented within 18 months


• the idea must contribute to national or regional growth, and


• attract funding from the private sector

This is what happened last week in Auckland, New Zealand.

With more than 170 ideas pre-submitted, these were whittled down to a top 5.

These were:

• Tourists buy a $10,000 debit card which must be spent in New Zealand and have their airfare to New Zealand free from anywhere in the world.


• Establish a capital fund to attract investors to help fund the growth phase of small to medium businesses


• Transfer the funds presently used to poison possums [about $200 million a year] to pay for trappers to collect the skins for processing into high value products


• Reform the present research and development system to help bring ideas more quickly to market, and


• Encourage a national positive attitude through a campaign dubbed 'Give it a go, bro!' This would include an advertising campaign and youth education. More about this in a later blog
  

Lets see which ones fly!!