Entrepreneurship experts converge on the capital

Experts in entrepreneurship and small to medium-sized businesses will gather in Wellington next week for the 2012 International Council for Small Business (ICSB) World Conference.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear, and interact with, the best brains on entrepreneurship and SMEs in the world. There will never be this much expertise in New Zealand again,” says Professor Claire Massey, head of Massey University’s School of Management, and a member of the conference organising committee.

Professor Massey says the conference is happening at an important time for New Zealand because small businesses often lead the way after a recession.

“Entrepreneurs and small firms are a really important source of new jobs for our economy, and they are usually in a better position to deal with the unexpected,” she says. “They can be more flexible and resilient, and they can respond more quickly to opportunities. If you want to see entrepreneurship and business innovation in action, it really is happening in the small business sector.”

The event has 18 tracks, or topic streams, and each includes papers by world experts in their fields. The conference tracks include indigenous entrepreneurship, education and training, social and economic development, small business management, new venture creation, female entrepreneurship, sustainability, and this year’s theme, Leading from the Edge.

“The theme was a very deliberate choice, because that’s the position New Zealand is in. We are a small country, isolated from global markets, and while that presents many challenges, it encourages us to think creatively,” Professor Massey says.

This will be well illustrated during the event’s Local Heroes panel discussion where innovative New Zealand companies including GreenButton, which helps software companies move their applications to the cloud, will explain how they took their companies global. Other members of the panel include local video game developer sidhe, stroller manufacturer phil&teds, and specialist high-tech hockey goalkeeping equipment manufacturer Obo. Sir Richard Taylor from Weta Workshop will also provide a video message.

The conference’s keynote speakers include Professor Saras Sarasvathy from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, who is considered one of the world’s top entrepreneurship professors, media commentator Rod Oram, and Bentham Ohia, chief executive of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, the world’s largest indigenous university.

There will also be a Disaster Management Symposium with a strong focus on Christchurch; a Doctoral Consortium, where PhD candidates can present their thesis proposals and gain feedback from experienced academics; and an optional Public Agencies Forum that will explore ways for government to better engage with the small business sector.

This will be the first time the conference has been held in New Zealand, and 400 business educators, researchers, policy makers and practitioners from around the world are expected to attend.

Massey University’s Centre for Small and Medium Enterprise Research successfully bid to host the conference, along with the Small Enterprise Association of Australia and New Zealand, Wellington City Council, and Grow Wellington. The event will take place from June 10-13 at the Michael Fowler Centre.

For more information about the conference visit: www.icsb2012.org.nz