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Several years ago four of us from Hamilton attended one evening meeting at the Auckland Inventor's Trust. This not-for-profit organisation was founded to help inventors bring their ideas through to the manufacturing stage, and also to foster more awareness of the importance of such development work.
Here is the address of their website:
http://www.inventors.co.nz/index.html
We found the meeting very useful, with a wide range of small scale inventors through to larger organisations (who had spent up to a million dollars on development), discussing their projects with the group of like-minded people, all under confidential disclosure.
There were about 70-80 people there that night, and the link for us was that one of their number had won an award at Fieldays the year before, with a very worthy invention, now called the Terrasaw.
http://terrasaw.co.nz/frameset.cfm
The early model Terrasaw was started up in front of the Fieldays judges in 2000 and promptly carved a wide slot in the dirt, ready for alkathene or cabling. There was no doubt from any of the people there, that we were witnessing an amazing new product that would do well. Representatives from every chainsaw manufacturer on the site came over, and talked earnestly with the owner.
We came away from that meeting with the idea of setting up a similar trust in Hamilton, perhaps called the Waikato Developer's Trust, but nothing has been done about it since. There are many good designers in Hamilton, plenty of manufacturing knowledge, the tools to do this work are now far more affordable and available, and I know there are lots of ideas out there that could be in manufacture and earning foreign exchange (or helping our own businesses thrive through better productivity).
If any others are interested in this idea too, just post on this forum.
Here is the address of their website:
http://www.inventors.co.nz/index.html
We found the meeting very useful, with a wide range of small scale inventors through to larger organisations (who had spent up to a million dollars on development), discussing their projects with the group of like-minded people, all under confidential disclosure.
There were about 70-80 people there that night, and the link for us was that one of their number had won an award at Fieldays the year before, with a very worthy invention, now called the Terrasaw.
http://terrasaw.co.nz/frameset.cfm
The early model Terrasaw was started up in front of the Fieldays judges in 2000 and promptly carved a wide slot in the dirt, ready for alkathene or cabling. There was no doubt from any of the people there, that we were witnessing an amazing new product that would do well. Representatives from every chainsaw manufacturer on the site came over, and talked earnestly with the owner.
We came away from that meeting with the idea of setting up a similar trust in Hamilton, perhaps called the Waikato Developer's Trust, but nothing has been done about it since. There are many good designers in Hamilton, plenty of manufacturing knowledge, the tools to do this work are now far more affordable and available, and I know there are lots of ideas out there that could be in manufacture and earning foreign exchange (or helping our own businesses thrive through better productivity).
If any others are interested in this idea too, just post on this forum.
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