We work with smart organisations, helping them change who they hire and how they hire.

We are a small company (2 full time and 5 part time staff), and get our leverage from joint ventures and strategic alliances. Our role with all our external partners is as the innovator, the bringer of new ideas and new approaches to the market place. There are a number of ways that we foster innovation so we can create new business ideas:

• By surrounding ourselves with great mentors who of whom we retain and consult with monthly on a private basis - Matt Church, Mal Emery, Steve Shepherd from Shirlaws Business Coaches, Gihan Perera and Daryl Grant. We also consult with a variety of specialist advisors on an as needs basis. All our mentors have very different expertise, and together provide us with enormous insights and understanding.

• Connecting to the networks of our mentors. While the mentors themselves are inspiring in their knowledge of their particular areas, this is perhaps a third of the value they provide to us. By going to their public events, we get to meet some of the smartest and most innovative people in this country, their other clients. The Principal of Abacus, Toby Marshall teaches people and companies how to build business networks – so we know how to take advantage of the powerful networks that surround our mentors.

• We hire university and school students to work with us part time in areas they know a lot about. For example IT and marketing, with a focus on leading edge web and email marketing – the whole world of direct response sales and community building. Who better than these bright YOUNG people to create leading edge technology. They live with stuff every day that old farts over 40 don’t even know exists!

• By going to heaps of conferences and reading, reading, reading. On the web and books. How else do you learn anything? Watching Big Brother??

• Finally and most importantly, by finding and creating links with mavericks. Those wonderfully exciting and creative people who see the world very differently, and they could be working anywhere – for example, some of my best insights come from a ferry skipper who I ride with most mornings. If you only talk to people at your golf club, as so many senior business people do, is it a wonder they haven’t had a new idea in their lives?