Reflections

The Hundred Year Company

May 15, 2012 By Will L. 5 Comments

I'm a bit of a business geek. Ever since I threw in my Engineering job to try my hand starting my own web design business in the sexy dot.com age, and later a string of startups in the dot.bust and 2.0 era, I think one of my favourite things to do is to sit back and listen to audiobooks and podcasts on the glorious stories behind successful ventures. One thing that's been bubbling in my mind this month is an interesting mystery in the world of business... No company has survived beyond 100 years.(Okay, I'll qualify this with the exception of a few banks and family owned … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Companies, Opinion, Reflections Tagged With: business, models

Sir Paul Callaghan’s legacy

March 24, 2012 By joshua 3 Comments

I was deeply saddened to hear of Sir Paul Callaghan's passing today. While he made many contributions to New Zealand over the years, for me personally his lasting legacy will be the presentation he gave at StrategyNZ last year. This talk resonates with many of us at Enspiral and was one of the inspirations that prompted Alex Gibson (with Graham Jenson) to create 100 Companies. The vision of New Zealand as a place where 'talent wants to live' is bang on the money - I constantly meet (and usually try to recruit) very talented people who can live anywhere in the world and choose New … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Inspiration, Reflections Tagged With: Leaders

Reflection on my internship at Enspiral

December 12, 2011 By Nicolas Leave a Comment

As part of my studies in computer science, I had the chance to take part in three professional experiences in the past three years. Each experience really helped develop my skills further, as well as gaining self-confidence and finding my technical interests in the IT world. Even then, I was missing something, without which, I felt absolutely uncertain about my future: that was a Purpose. I like making websites mainly for their ability to reach out many people and to give birth to strong communities with comparatively little effort. I see the Web a bit like a big jam session where everybody … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections, Staff Stories, Working Life, Work_Life

Inspired by Festival for the Future

December 5, 2011 By guyryan Leave a Comment

If there was one thing you could do to change the world – and you knew you couldn't fail, what would it be? A good friend once asked me this. Now it's a question I ask myself almost every day. This time last year we proposed the Inspiring Stories project to the Vodafone NZ Foundation: imagine if we connected up young filmmakers around New Zealand with young Kiwis making a difference. Imagine if we gave those young filmmakers hands on training and support, and connected them up with creative industry mentors. Imagine the stories they could tell. Imagine the people and projects we could … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections, Volunteer, Work_Life Tagged With: festival for the future, inspiring stories, volunteer

Live Below the Line and Enspiral

September 4, 2011 By WillWatterson Leave a Comment

When I returned from a trip to a Burmese refugee camp in 2001, I knew my life was fundamentally changed. It was no longer just coffee (fairtrade organic) that got me up in the morning, but a passion to see a world free from poverty… one where human beings flourished. In my ten years in community work I’ve been constantly blown away by the power that everyday people have to bend their natural creativity and passion towards fundamentally changing the world around them. There’s something special, too, about Kiwi ingenuity - that wonderful neighborliness that we are so well known for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections, Volunteer

In the pursuit of purpose

August 16, 2011 By sam 2 Comments

Sam working as a conservation team leader in NZ

A few weeks back I wrote a blog which was picked up by Nature Coast, about lifestyle working and it’s possibilities for something greater. It posed the quandry “if we’ve got more flexibility & choice over our working lives, what’s our new found motivation directed toward?”. I have been exploring this with my own life for the last 4 years. I sometimes call myself a ‘corporate refugee’, but really my time was only slight compared to many who’ve escaped the realm later in life. I left the UK with the assertion that I was ‘off to work on something which I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Big Ideas, Opinion, Reflections, Remote Work, Staff Stories, Working Life

1 Year In

March 1, 2011 By Samson Ootoowak 2 Comments

A year ago today I started my first day at Enspiral. A few days before that I had gone in for an interview in response to a small job ad that I saw posted on a popular New Zealand website. Having recently arrived in Wellington and having had no luck in another city I was hungry for work (and so was my bank account). I had two other job interviews that day that both seemed promising. One for a more traditional web development company (and by traditional I mean with ping-pong tables and foosball) that seemed to be doing quite well and another for a company that made video games. Now the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections, Staff Stories, Work_Life

On Startups, 3 steps… Ready Fire Aim.

January 14, 2011 By Will L. Leave a Comment

I've been in and around the startups for a dozen years now. In the early days I did it right, quite by accident. Then got thinking too much and did it all wrong, and in doing so I hung out with people who did it all wrong, and now I'm full circle again. Here's what I've learnt in 3 simple words (I stole them from Saatchi & Saatchi)... Ready, Fire, Aim. Ready... And ready is a rhetorical question, who cares, just do it. Fire... Just do it (thanks Nike). Don't think too hard, just do it. Aim... Now's the time to think, while your feet are pounding the pavement. Oh, and that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Companies, Reflections

Why I joined Enspiral

November 26, 2010 By sam 2 Comments

I’m fairly new to Enspiral, but I sure am glad I crossed paths with Joshua a few months back. I came to Wellington without a clear vision of what I would be up to work & life-wise, but open to opportunities and confident in my own abilities and flexibility. I’m fresh from a 4 year stint in the Environmental & Conservation sectors, but I have a business background - the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to head back to ‘just another job’. I have always believed that working in a job you hate is ridiculous - finding a job that fits your personal values is … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections, Staff Stories, Work_Life

The value of experience

November 11, 2010 By joshua 1 Comment

Experience counts for so much in business, the value I have gotten from trying to apply different ideas or practices (and often getting nowhere) far out weighs that from books and talks. Years ago I remember reading truisms like 'if you get the sinking feeling that you've made a hiring error then act soon, putting your head in the sand and hoping for a change is bad for everyone'. Makes excellent sense and is so easy to say - but knowing this didn't stop me from making exactly that mistake when I first went into business. Repeatedly. When I look back over some of my early hiring … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reflections