Idealog #23 :: Idealog :: the magazine and website of New Zealand creative business, ideas and innovation

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Murdoch's revenge: Idealog #23, on sale from Monday, August 31 at good stores everywhere.

Celsias

3 Baby steps

4 Eco-news

Interact

10 Contributors

Alistair Guthrie, Trace Hodgson, Tara Jahn-Werner and Colleen Tunnicliff

Celsias

10 All hands to the green pump

Al Gore’s truth is becoming more convenient

11 Greening with envy

Keeping up with the neighbours has a big upside

12 The right side of the books

In which the board learns a valuable lesson

Interact

13 Alright on the night

We know it: awards ceremonies can be a bit of a lottery

14 Wiggs' way

Lance Wiggs helps with your tricky business problems.

Celsias

Interact

Whatever your Big Idea is, pitch it to the Icehouse and you could win $15,000 worth of prizes, including three months in the Icehouse business incubator to develop your product and offer to investors.

16 Read all about it

Kiwi marketers have long been asking for a robust news service for the marketing, advertising, media and PR industries. So here it is.

16 Introducing Celsias

Celsias is the new social media site for Kiwis or Kiwi companies who want to share their sustainability initiatives, ideas and stories.

Celsias

18 Don’t fear the reaper

John Key is doing his best to scythe sustainability from the government dictionary—and maybe he’s right. The S-word has baggage. It's about disagreement, good and bad science, frugality and fear. Chris Tobias suggests how to move beyond the arguments.

Now

21 Sparked

Manoj Patel seems to have a knack for timing—and the smarts to make the most of it

22 Simple space

Architect Eqo Leung says he’s still learning. The lesson is to keep it as simple as possible.

24 The payback

A couple of bottles of whiskey and generous friends in the right places is all it took for musician Mel Parsons to make her first music video.

Celsias

24 The odd couple

He took Bendon from a knickerwear manufacturer to a global lingerie brand; she holed up in a Wellington yoga studio before deciding it was time to join the ‘real world’. Felicity Monk asks how Stefan Preston made the leap from Stella McCartney to Jyoti Morningstar, and how Morningstar moved from teaching yoga to launching an ambitious fashion eco-label.

Now

26 Swamp thing

Matt Kenyon is taking on our culture. To do that, he’s become a human barcode scanner.

28 Creating waves

How do you improve the definitive land yacht? By putting it on the water, of course.

30 Ideas inside

Chicago’s Coudal Partners was a design and advertising agency like thousands of others. Clients came with their problems; Coudal replied with a solution. But when business dried up, Jim Coudal moved from serving others to creating and marketing the company’s own ideas. But what use is an ad agency without clients?

Celsias

30 Mind the bollocks

Johnny Rotten once mocked the Queen; today he saves his sneer for New Zealand butter. Our key export markets are increasingly in the grip of environmental and social activism, led by a virtuous circle of consumers and supermarkets. Some Kiwi exporters are on to this rapidly growing and mutating phenomenon. Others, Mike Booker discovers, haven’t a clue.

Features

40 Walk the walk

It’s 30 years since the release of the Sony Walkman. Matt Suddain tracks the evolution of portable music—and the complaints of those who wish it would go away.

48 Orion’s hunt

Orion Health is taking an industrial design infusion to give Barack Obama a hand reforming US healthcare. Andy Kenworthy peeks at Orion’s master plan

54 So you think you can dance?

… but can you turn it into a business? Meet four New Zealand women who have turned their love of dance—and the skills they learned—into their own creative ventures. By Tara Jahn-Werner. Plus a rich and energetic tradition.

62 Free thinking

We pay for the Herald, but not for its website; we’ll give money to Sky while we let the state-owned TVNZ struggle. As business thinkers proclaim the age of the free and Rupert Murdoch heads a fightback, Matt Cooney asks if we really know the value of a dollar. Plus keep on giving.