I was in Auckland over the weekend and was invited inside The Generator, a start-up sharing space in the city, where you pay less than $200 a month for access to hot desks, meeting rooms and function space. Coffee is free and good, as is wifi. 

Seems spaces like these are popping up all over the country which, like Singapore, has a small population base and therefore needs to create higher value jobs beyond dairy which, by the way the week I was there, was making the headlines with the Fonterra scandal.

One headline screamed “100% Tainted”, a sarcastic take on the country’s 100% Pure marketing slogan which had come to define the destination and country.

Make no mistake – the Fonterra scandal is a big deal for this nation and the Prime Minister John Key had to fly to China to make a personal apology. China’s baby formula market is worth around NZ$3.0 billion a year to New Zealand and a couple of days ago, Fonterra NZ Milk Products head Gary Romano resigned, the first of heads to roll.

Like Singapore, New Zealand has to diversify its economy and one way it is doing this is through encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship. So there are lots of schemes in place and bodies set up to do just that.

The Generator, a start-up sharing space in Auckland

But again like Singapore, New Zealand faces similar constraints – a small market base and limited access to capital and investment – Singapore is making better progress of course due to its strategic location within Asia while New Zealand is just a tad too far away for capital reach – and so it makes it difficult for start-ups to scale. 

But unlike Singapore, Kiwis are more naturally inclined to take risks and be creative (this is the land that gave us bungee jumping, for one) – they’ve had to do so because, like Indonesians, they know they have to create their own jobs and cannot rely on the government to provide for them.

In fact, I was speaking to an investor – he’s Singaporean but lives in Shanghai and has made several smart investments in travel in China – and he said much as he supports innovations and entrepreneurship in Singapore through a personal fund, he recognizes the limitations – and that limitation is mindset.

“In China, we hear of stories of entrepreneurs who are willing to take huge bets on their own business. One person I know sold his house and put $1 million into his own start-up. They are hungry and feel that even if they fail, they say it’s an experience,” he told me.

Of course, we have hungry people in Singapore too – look at hungrygowhere, the food blog which was sold to Singtel for S$12 million – but it often appears to me, at least, that people in Singapore are hungrier for food than anything else.

Which brings me to our WIT Developer & Designer Challenge – big thanks to those hungry folks who attended our webinar last week. We’re pretty excited about it because it’s our first attempt to match real travel problems with fresh thinking.

In all, we have four Challenges.

• Abacus Ventures wants participants to create a “WOW” point of sale for travel agents on the move.

• Travelport wants “to develop an innovative and inspirational search application on a mobile platform using its latest Fuzzy Search technology”. The solution should enable travel agencies online and offline to increase their revenues, by providing inspiration to the undecided traveller; bookable travel choices for both flight and flight/hotel options.

• Brand Karma, jointly with WIT, wants to see a hotel website for the 21^st century travellers, specifically using the luxury Trisara resort in Phuket as a model.

• Vaultpad, the travel accelerator, jointly with WIT, is throwing down the gauntlet for participants to “design your dream airline website” – and is leaving it open to the imagination. Do a mash-up, travel + non-travel, whatever you feel like.

Full details of each challenge are here on our website. We welcome anyone and everyone who are hungry to take up this Challenge. We don’t care if you come from Auckland or Athens or Aceh, so long as you have the right mindset for innovation and adventure. You never know where this journey will take you.