Last week, Tauranga hosted its inaugural innovation festival, Groundswell. Over seven days, a number of truly inspiring events were held across the city, featuring many of the Bay of Plenty’s leading entrepreneurs and emerging tech businesses, enabling us to celebrate their outstanding achievements.

Last night, I joined a large crowd at Tauranga’s Art Gallery to enjoy the festival’s final showcase; the pitching and judging event marking the finale of Startup Weekend Tauranga. In many ways, this was a very fitting way to end what has been a feast of highly-anticipated innovation events, covering a wide spectrum of domains and sectors.

Some awesome pitching took place at last night’s Startup Weekend Tauranga finale

Startup Weekend Tauranga shines a spotlight on Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty as a premium location in New Zealand where talent wants and CAN live and work. A fresh, green-fields centre for innovative business venture’s which has a collaborative community who are active supporters of new growth. It’s a critically important message to share with the region’s emerging entrepreneurs who one day will shine at events such as Groundswell. It’s an ambition shared by Startup Weekend’s across the globe.

I’ve spoken before about the emergence of the Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. It means little however if it does not reach out and connect with New Zealand’s wider innovation networks. If ‘starting local and going global’ is to have any meaning then that outreach is key. Venture Centre, the organisers of Startup Weekend Tauranga, have just taken a major step in this direction when they announced last week that they had joined forces with Hamilton-based business incubator SODA Inc. and their Regional Partner Initiative. Jo Allum, co-founder of Venture Centre said. “We are pleased to partner with SODA to make the Lift and Boost founder-focused incubation programmes available to entrepreneurs across the Bay of Plenty. It’s an exciting time and a great next step in the evolution of both organisations.”

I totally agree. But there is more. Venture Centre is also working with Zero Ventures, Dan Khan’s Wellington-based new founder-focused ‘venture’ to introduce an additional and very valuable new entrepreneur program to the Bay. ZeroPoint Ventures provides early-stage funding, evidence-based coaching, and a clear pathway for software entrepreneurs to build a $1MM+ revenue business within 2 years. It’s being backed by Callaghan Innovation and brings a totally new approach to supporting early stage entrepreneurs. I’m really looking forward to seeing this joint initiative take off in the Bay.

Oh. And did I mention CO.STARTERS? CO.STARTERS is a program that starts off with providing experienced business / community leaders with the process and tools necessary to assist and support local people. Creating a strong community of facilitators and mentors greatly accelerates the development of startup businesses and the refinement of emerging businesses in their area. The program began in 2008 in Chattanooga, TN and will soon be available in Tauranga. Once again, it’s the team at Venture Centre reaching out, and in this case, accessing a global program.

In my mind, working with partners outside the region is critically important for Tauranga and the wider Bay of Plenty’s innovation ecosystem. We have reached that tipping point where we can have a significant impact on NZ Inc’s future innovation direction. Last week’s events at Groundswell were indicative of just how far our ecosystem has come.

The programs being introduced and supported by Venture Centre in the city and wider Bay of Plenty region will help create the collaborative framework necessary to build and scale those early stage companies in our local ecosystem.

For me, it demonstrates that the Bay’s entrepreneur ecosystem has matured to the point that it can connect, engage and collaborate with other key innovation centres, both locally and offshore. I think of it as a kind of ‘Tauranga 2.0’ ecosystem moment. The beginning of a new era in which the city and region’s entrepreneurs can step up and leverage the fantastic opportunities now available in the Bay.