Fruitbowl - Fresh Ideas from Hawke's Bay

My last night in London after a huge week. We’ve done around a 1000 miles talking to partners in Bristol, Midlands, Newcastle, York, Manchester and London.  One more sleep and time to head home with a stock of Jeffery Wests.

I always enjoy coming up here.  The contrast between NZ where 200 years ago we were all in grass skirts, to walking past a 14 century church I have trouble computing.

It still blows me away how our company is quite virtual. We have a big development team in Wellington and we have sales teams around NZ, Australia and the UK.  I met four staff in person for the first time instead of on Skype and Yammer. The team members I’ve never actually spent real time before are on message, really impressive and all have a great sense of humour.

Using online tools we’ve been able to create a global company with a very strong culture.  Compared to doing business 1o years ago it is incredible how coordinated and in sync you can be, even when your team is 28 hours travel time away.

Even further we’ve been able to grow an ecosystem of partners.  They are all connected online and it’s amazing how quickly the community is working together to create value and find new opportunities.

We’re discovering how the internet makes working globally very doable. It’s simply incredible how location is becoming irrelevant if we have the infrastructure to connect. We have a lifestyle that is a fantasy to those that catch the tube to work in the morning, yet we can participate in these huge global markets.

Getting out of the Bay every so often allows you see the amazing opportunities that come with scale, but I have no interest in being based here.  Technology really is letting us have the best of both worlds.

After a week of traveling around England though, I’m looking forward to a real coffee at Hawthornes on Monday.