Techweek’18 | Innovation that’s good for the world
Techweek built its 2018 programme around a simple idea: innovation that’s good for the world. I researched over 500 New Zealand scale-ups to find companies that embodied it, then wrote and scripted video profiles used to promote them ahead of their headline-event speaking slots.
500+ companies researched
5 case studies selected
MBIE principal sponsor, government-backed
Robotics Plus
Founded in Tauranga in 2009, Robotics Plus grew out of a chance meeting between horticulture investor Steve Saunders and then-PhD student Alistair Scarfe. What started as an idea to robotically pollinate and pick fruit became a commercial apple packer sorting up to 120 apples a minute, and an autonomous kiwifruit harvester built with the University of Auckland, University of Waikato and Plant and Food Research.
I profiled the company's founders and engineering team on site at their Tauranga workshop, writing the feature story and scripting the accompanying video for their appearance at Techweek's "10 Billion Mouths" headline event.
Revolution Fibres
Revolution Fibres started in 2009 with three friends trying to build the world's best air filter for HRV. A decade on, their "sonic electrospinning" process produces nanofibre 500 times thinner than a human hair – kilometres of it per second – for uses spanning skincare, acoustic panels, and carbon-fibre reinforcement for aerospace and Formula 1.
I spent a day at their Henderson HQ interviewing founders Iain Hosie and Simon Feasey and the wider R&D team, writing the feature and scripting the video ahead of their appearance at The Fourth Revolution in Christchurch.