Drury, Tindall endorse NBR Radar

Successful entrepreneurs Rod Drury and Sir Stephen Tindall are endorsing NBR Radar as a resource for investors and business interests and a new way of celebrating New Zealand innovation.

“If we want New Zealand to be a better place, want better schools and hospitals, we need to go out and build these trading businesses,” Xero founder and chief executive Mr Drury says.

“The NBR Radar is a new series and we want to find those New Zealand companies that are starting to emerge and are really making a difference. Stop being shy and retiring and let’s celebrate New Zealand business.”

NBR Radar will be a constantly updated list of individuals, many of whom are young entrepreneurs, who have established businesses and significant contributors to value growth in the New Zealand economy over the next three to five years.

The first batch of 25 individuals will be published online on Monday, November 27.

Sir Stephen Tindall, the founder of The Warehouse and venture capital firm K One W One, says New Zealand is riding high at the moment and it needs to be careful not to lose that momentum.

“Everybody loves us. We are the flavour of the month just about everywhere.

“So we can go either way. We can build on this or we can start sliding down the sigmoid curve and it’s important that we do the former.”

Sir Stephen says there are big opportunities to build global companies from New Zealand and he’s optimistic “we are going to kick up rather than down.”

He says there is certainly a place for NBR Radar to play a role in that goal.

“I think the more that you can highlight people that are going places the better. I think there’s a lot of passive money out there at the moment that’s either in property or term deposits and we need to prise that out so more people invest in productive industries here in New Zealand. So anything anybody can do is a good thing.”

NBR publisher Todd Scott says the concept NBR Radar derives "from our commitment to being 'The Meeting Place of Intelligent Business'.

“To qualify, you will be judged as being one of a group of people we consider ‘Smart people doing Smart Things’,” Mr Scott says.

The series will use our innovative and expanding newsroom including NBR View, the multimedia unit headed by content director Hamish Coleman-Ross.

The launch will also be showcased in a special print edition feature on December 1.