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Did you know that more than a quarter of New Zealanders have poor mental health. Our hyper-paced, digital world has left us more lonely, more depressed and more anxious than ever before.

The trend is particularly alarming among young people, with 23.5% aged 15-24 experiencing high or very high levels of psychological distress in 2021/22 compared to just 5.1% 10 years earlier. Dr Louise Schofield, the co-founder and CEO of PREKURE, located on the 1st floor of the B:HIVE, has seen the fallout firsthand.

“Two years ago, I stood next to a mum who was beside herself with worry for her 24-year-old daughter. Her daughter was suicidal. Together we called the mental health crisis team for help, yet no help came. They told us that if we thought she was going to do something that night then we should call the police,” she says.

“Later that night when I was at home thinking about what I had just witnessed, I got sad and then I got really mad. Mad at the system, mad at the lack of support, mad at the lack of well-trained mental health professionals, mad at the lack of quality education on what you can do to keep yourself mentally well.”

The result was PREKURE, a social enterprise committed to revolutionising healthcare by training Professional Health Coaches, Nutrition Coaches, and Mental Health Coaches.

PREKURE is committed to making a difference and this month is stepping up with a new complimentary offering. Their  21-Day Mental Fitness online programme developed with the latest scientific knowledge will be available free to help participants build their mental fitness and provide tools to manage everyday stress and anxiety. (The programme is normally priced at $99.)

Created by the PREKURE Faculty, the programme integrates scientific-backed learning of the seven lifestyle levers to achieve optimal mental fitness: Eat, Move, Sleep, Breathe, Cold Water, Joy, and Self-Talk. The daily online learning provides actionable tools for immediate positive change.    

Dr Schofield says the programme’s aim is to inspire people to be the best they can be.

“To eat more whole real food that is not ultra-processed. To move more and gradually do harder exercise like lifting heavy things and getting their exercise intensity up,” she says. “To give themselves an 8-hour sleep opportunity every night. To do hard things. Things that at first glance they may not think they cannot do, like getting into very cold water.”

Interested? Sign up for free here!

Product Development company IQ Hive have found a unique niche within the massive mobile services sector which has transformed the nature of their business.

IQ Hive modernises and automates IT systems and processes and now find themselves dedicated largely to One New Zealand, one of the key network providers in the country.

“We started managing projects with them, small to medium size ones, but then started to pick up larger ones and now all of our business is predominantly with them in the wholesale sector,” says Alex Vaz, Product Manager at IQ Hive.

It’s all about what could be called white labelling when a company purchases a generic product and rebrands it as their own to sell.

“What One New Zealand has noticed is a growing desire for other “non telco” companies to get into the mobile service space, which is very expensive to set up, as you can imagine,” he says. “There’s a lot of infrastructure, like cell towers, huge servers, a lot of overseas contacts to enable international capabilities”

“One New Zealand already has all the right infrastructure so they work with us and we created a layer that provides a seamless integration into their infrastructure so OneNZ customers can utilise the One New Zealand network and they can sell their own branded version of OneNZ’s mobile services,” he says.

“Our platform sits on top of those services, so when their wholesale customers come to them with just a brand such as images, some website copy and colour guide, we give them an entire platform that allows their customers to purchase sim cards, buy plans and manage the services – all branded under a customers brand which ultimately uses the OneNZ network.”

“A lot of people have amazing customer bases and would like to expand to mobile services. Anyone can do that now.”

Overseas, in countries like India, there are thousands of mobile services providers.  Essentially New Zealand is getting into the game happening overseas where the market is adopting more and more players, which OneNZ and IQ Hive hope to work together to champion.

Business is growing with the successful launch of both MightyMobile – Mighty Ape’s new mobile brand as well as Contact Mobile, the mobile service belonging to one of NZs biggest power providers – Contact Energy.

Watch this space!

Awesome charity Save the Kiwi is a longtime B:HIVE community member, and many of you will already be aware of the great work they do. This month they have an exciting new month-long campaign, called the Kiwi Art Trail, bringing a collection of uniquely designed and painted kiwi sculptures to Commercial Bay, the Viaduct, Wynyard Quarter, and Silo Park.

The Kiwi Art Trail will run from 9 October until 3 November 2023 and features 20 kiwi sculptures that have been turned into bespoke pieces of art by well-known and emerging New Zealand artists including Otis Frizzell, Flox, Amanda Billing, Sarah Oostendorp and Jonathan Organ. The Kiwi Art Trail is supported by insurance broker Gallagher (who recently rebranded from Crombie Lockwood).

“The Kiwi Art Trail is a great way for people to get up close and personal with a kiwi in a very different way,” says Save the Kiwi Executive Director Michelle Impey.

When the trail ends, the sculptures will be auctioned. Proceeds will go towards raising the next generation of kiwi at the Gallagher Kiwi Burrow, a facility managed by Save the Kiwi that incubates and hatches kiwi chicks and releases them into the wild.

Michelle is excited about the fundraising and awareness opportunities of the Kiwi Art Trail. “New Zealand used to be home to millions of kiwi, but in just a few hundred years, widespread clearing of forest and introduced predators have seen numbers crash,” she says. “Stoats, ferrets, dogs, and other predators pose a great danger to kiwi. Approximately 68,000 remain, a number which declines nationally by 2% every year. Of the kiwi chicks that hatch in areas where there is no predator control, 95% are killed before they reach adulthood. It’s very sobering, and we hope the Kiwi Art Trail will raise awareness about the threats kiwi face and raise much-needed funds to help the next generation of kiwi.”

But there are also many success stories. Michelle says in some areas like Northland and Coromandel, there is actually growth in kiwi numbers, which is testament to the great work of community groups. Earlier in 2023, Save the Kiwi released 50 kiwi to Wellington, and another 50 to Tongariro. Now’s the time to step up and support kiwi conservation.

Check out the trail if you can! For more information, visit www.kiwiarttrail.nz
For info on Gallagher Kiwi Burrow, visit  www.savethekiwi.nz/about-us/what-we-do/crombie-lockwood-kiwi-burrow/

Everyone loves a Kiwi success story and leading software developer CodeHQ is most certainly that.

Beginning life as Augen back in 1993, over the past three decades CodeHQ has brought the power of 15-hour in and out-sourced working days and a relentless appetite for innovation to their clients.

With a base here at the B:HIVE and a second office in Vietnam, CodeHQ has delivered world-class software design and implementation at a considerable cost saving.

Why Vietnam?
The start of the new millennium saw Vietnam invest massively in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). It was for this reason that, 18 years ago, CodeHQ chose to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ho Chi Minh City has a population of around 9 million people, and with the vast grouping of available talent on offer, CodeHQ’s clients can save as much as 30% compared to local employment costs and better than 50% on local contract rates.

CodeHQ CEO and Co-Founder Peter Vile believes the company’s offering, with 100 staff spread across both offices, gives them and their direct clients a significant competitive edge. “Drawing on highly talented software development teams, has allowed us to add scale to our very experienced New Zealand-based workforce in a way that wouldn’t usually have been possible,” says Peter. “We employ all members of our Vietnam team directly and have built a trusted reputation. This means we have skilled workers waiting to join our ranks when we need them and we can onboard them quickly and deliver scale even faster.”

A ‘One Team’ culture
Developing an operating model organically over the course of two decades in Vietnam and three in New Zealand has produced a perfectly synchronised ‘one team’ culture.

The Vietnam working day usually starts around 1.30 pm New Zealand time.

CodeHQ’s clients and local developers can work all morning, do a quick virtual stand-up with their Vietnamese colleagues, who then carry on working into the evening and the night NZ time.

Operating across two time zones provides a considerable extension to the Kiwi business day and a major boost to productivity.

The next stage of the journey
So, what’s next for CodeHQ as the company’s enters its thirties?

In a word, growth. Growth built on the back of an agile business model that has evolved over time to be perfect for today’s always-on commercial environment.

When Māori-founded company AskNicely moved into the B:HIVE last August they were intentional about celebrating the support of the mana whenua, with a pōwhiri and a blessing.

Now less than a year later the company is celebrating winning Hi-Tech Kamupene Māori o te Tau – Māori Company of the Year.

AskNicely is guided by Kaupapa Māori (the Māori way of doing things) and is proud to shine a light on Māori success in the technology sector.

CEO Aaron Ward, (Ngāti Maru) is hoping more Māori and Pasifika will see there is a genuine pathway in technology. “The rate of participation in the technology sector by Māori is woefully low. Māori kids need Māori heroes,” he says.

AskNicely helps businesses make every customer experience a success and has teams in the US and Europe serving millions of customers across the world. The company collects feedback from the customer after they have an experience with a frontline worker. This is forwarded to the worker directly through an app on their phone.

“There’s plenty of ways to collect feedback from customers, we’ve all seen those silly long surveys that lots of companies inflict upon their customers. What we do is we make sure that feedback doesn’t go to an analyst or some sort of report for managers to look at – we make sure it goes directly to the person that serves them. So that they know what they do matters, they are caught in the act of doing things right.”

AskNicely’s executive team from the U.S flew in to celebrate the awards last month at a glitzy ceremony in Christchurch. Ask Nicely has 25 staff at the B:HIVE, and other 25 in the United States and several in Amsterdam.

“This is where the discovery work was done, the design work was done. This is where the building is done. And then we have the rest of our business, our teams in the US and in Europe that go out and market our product around the world.”

The stereotype of scientists walking around labs with notebooks and fastidiously taking hand notes, is amazingly, not far from the truth.

Antipodes Scientific’s Managing Director, Daniel Fitzpatrick, who has a doctorate from the University of Cambridge, has been through the ropes himself.

Which is why he and Antipodes Scientific are building tools to help address challenges they faced as researchers themselves. All members of the team have a background in lab-based research.

Now, Antipodes Scientific is about to launch a product that has the ability to completely transform research. Catapulting researchers from pen and paper and mountains of unsearchable binders, to a fully searchable, pre-populating electronic lab notebook, that meets the chemical industry’s stringent health and safety requirements.

“It means that researchers can spend less time on day-to-day monotony of routine tasks and have more time to do productive work,” says Daniel.

A big component of the transformation is that scientists will have access to research records electronically, including chemical transformations, which will accelerate discovery processes, especially in the pharmaceutical sector.

So why have researchers been stuck in the dark ages?

Partly, Daniel says, the industry is slow to adopt new technology because of the regulatory environment in which they operate. If they do things as they always have, regulators like the FDA are familiar with their procedures. But, if something new is introduced it might trigger a long review process, impacting time to market. It’s always been seen as easier just to carry a book around.

“I do find it mind boggling,” says Daniel. “I’ve got a great photo of the storage area at the university where I did post grad. We would write our results in thick books of 200 pages, and there’s basement full of thousands of these books, that need to be kept for 40 years by law.

“When someone moves on, their books go into the basement and no-one knows where they are. You lose past knowledge – no-one’s going to spend hours searching through them.”

The electronic lab notebook will be released publicly next month to time with the post summer holidays of the US and Europe, where Antipodes Scientific does a lot of business.

“We’ve got existing customers trialling, and word has spread to other companies, so there’s growing interest to get it up and running,” Daniel says.

Transformational indeed. If you recognise Daniel working from his desk on level one, it’s highly unlikely you will see much paper!

When Ariel Metekingi called his friend Marsden Hulme in Australia a few years back and asked him if he would come home and help his people, he said yes. The result was Hapū Ora.

Marsden, who is of Ngapuhi and Waikato-Tainui descent had been working with global organisations in the UK, US and Australia and the timing was right. He was ready to bring his commercial background back home and use it to advantage.

The friends founded Kaupapa Māori organisation Hapū Ora, based on level 1 of the B:HIVE.

Their approach is both caring and practical.  “On one hand we are very much socially driven, but we are also a mix of social and commercial,” says Marsden. “It’s a logical handshake.”

Hapū Ora provides 12 home care sites throughout NZ, with the B:HIVE as their head office, focusing on returning mainly but not exclusively Māori tamariki and rangatahi to their whanau. These young people had previously been removed from their families by various organisations. This  home care is supported by a recruitment arm which has relationships with the likes of Fulton Hogan, Downer, G.J Gardener Homes and some telcos, as well as mining companies in Australia. Getting rangitahi into employment is a crucial part of the process.

The skill sets Marsden and Ariel bring to Hapū Ora are immense. Marsden’s experience encompasses Operations, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing), Workforce Management and Contact Centre Operations. His entrepreneurial ventures include consumer electronics, telecommunications, and renewable energy.

Ariel, (Ngati Toa Rangatira,Ngai Tahu, Ngati Koata, Ngati Tahu Ngati Whau, Ngati Pikiao Te Ata haunui a Paparangi, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Ngat Ata) has served on the Tainui Māori Trust Board. More recently he worked as a management consultant in New Zealand, Australia, and the USA, advising businesses on entering new markets and building international networks.

Hapū Ora works differently to other organisations. “Our point of difference is that we are caring at a broader level, by reaching into homes to try to help whanau have a better life through employment opportunities,” Marsden says.

“One of things we have learned, is that many whanau are returning kids on a benefit, so it’s a real struggle to feed another mouth. While the aspiration of sending kids back is noble, from a practical point of view it is difficult. When we talk to Iwi we are able to talk about employment for rangatahi to help the whanau.”

The organisation is government funded and has partnerships with Oranga Tamariki, DHBs, Mental Health Services and other specialists.

There are currently 25 kids in Hapū Ora’s care across the country from Invercargill to Auckland. Some of their centres, which are mainly family homes, are owned by Oranga Tamariki or Hapū Ora. Seventy percent of all kids in care are of Māori descent. And Hapu Ora is seeing kids younger and younger and with more complex trauma.

“Our job is to reset that trauma working closely with other services, no one group has all the answers,” he says.

Torrential downpours have a big effect on New Zealand’s civil engineers.

For a start, they get nervous about just how much rain will go into soak hole, stormwater pipes and downstream receiving catchments says Kane Willcox, team leader at Maven on Level One.

Then he says they get curious and want to see how their designs have coped.

“The big flood on January 27 and the subsequent cyclone was devastating for people, and our sincere sympathies are with them and their families,” Kane says. “The event, however, gave a us a real-life opportunity to evaluate some work Maven has been doing to protect against flooding.

“That includes designing new soak holes, pipe capacity checks and a variety of other engineering solutions. I got out and about as soon as the water allowed me to and had a look at a few of our sites. I was very happy with what I found.

The Maven team at the B:HIVE is involved in general civil engineering and land development, with current work flow being focused on delivering various large scale subdivision projects.

Kane predicts the flood event will have an effect on freeboard levels – the level at which houses needs to be built on a site. These levels could be increased to make buildings more resilient.

“We need to future proof not only Auckland, but across New Zealand,” he says.

The Maven team has been growing quickly, with the help of its B:HVE colleagues 84 Recruitment finding it top talent. The 10-strong B:HIVE staff complements a larger team of engineers and surveyors based in nine offices across the country.

In the mop up now taking place Kane says the challenge for many will be getting sign off to be allowed to do work to solve issues that the weather events caused. As well as consent for engineering work to take place, there are also considerations around insurance claims and Toka Tū Ake EQC (Earthquake Commission).

“We are all going to have to be a bit patient,” he says. “The influx of work has suddenly got so much longer.”

The fine weather in the past couple of weeks and a chance to get to the beach for a swim is helping with the wait.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems like ChatGPT have surprised a lot of companies with their efficiency and, well, intelligence.

Many employees are quietly nervous that their jobs are threatened by the rise of these new tools.

But ‘tool’ is the crucial word here. AI systems are just tools like the hammer or the wheel, and it’s important to keep them in perspective. Will they be disruptive? Definitely. Yet will this disruption result in pain and suffering for the average company and employee? They don’t have to.

Here’s how EverEdge, the intangible asset specialists based on the B:HIVE Level 2, thinks about AI systems.

About 30 years ago, when AI first crawled out of its cradle, the early machines began to defeat some of the world’s best chess players. Breathless news of these victories flowed across global media just like the stories of ChatGPT over the last few months.

The human chess players figured out ways to adapt. The smart human chess players started allying with AI systems, using them as tools to win. Rather than stubbornly competing against the machines using only their brains, the human/AI teams ended up consistently beating the AI systems that were operating alone.

EverEdge knows that companies which deploy AI tools to enhance the productivity of their human employees, rather than using them to replace their staff, will achieve incredible advantages over their competition. Obviously, humans alone can’t beat smart machines, but human/AI teams will soon be like having a hundred little superheroes dotted around your office.

EverEdge knows this because it specialises in seeing the intangible assets behind even the most “obvious” business dynamics. Those companies that are leveraging – rather than fearing – AI are adding value to their organisations by generating better returns on investment through the enhanced use of assets such as data, systems and processes, software, network effects and content.

As with most things, technology can be worrying, but learning how to leverage it effectively and drive value can take the edge off the shock.

You’ve just taken delivery of your beautiful new couch or state-of-the-art fridge. If you are very lucky your old favourites will be taken away at the same time, but where do they end up?

B:HIVE-based, online furniture and appliance company Andoo has partly built its rapidly growing internet-based furniture and appliance reputation on answering that question.

It is all about sustainability and recycling. It’s absolutely committed to raising the bar and thousands of tonnes of no longer usable household items are being repurposed as a result. There’s no greenwashing here!

The team works with multiple recycling partners for cardboard, whiteware, polystyrene waste, and more. Wherever possible the process of recycling starts right at its warehouse.

Anna Faber, content producer from Andoo, explains: “We have two machines in our warehouse that we use to process waste. The cardboard bundling machine packs cardboard and sends it to a partner in New Zealand and the EPS compactor compresses polystyrene into blocks, which then goes to a partner in NZ and is sent overseas to be remanufactured into things like skirting boards and picture frames.”

Everything that can be diverted from landfill is, Anna says.

As well as recycling,  Andoo is committed to the process that creates the products it sells, including its own brands alongside the big names like Beko, KitchenAid, and Sealy.

“Our parent company Winning, which is based in Australia, has a dedicated team that conducts due diligence on supply chain across the key areas of modern slavery, packaging, carbon emissions and timber sourcing,” Anna says.

Modern slavery is still a real thing.

“Our team engages with our suppliers to understand what practices and processes they have in place to manage and mitigate the risks of modern slavery within their organisations and supply chains,” Anna says. “A key part of our approach to responsible sourcing at Andoo is to educate suppliers and provide practical advice to further understand the risks of modern slavery in their supply chain, while improving transparency and due diligence measures.”