Supporting values-based innovation in Aotearoa
EHF is welcoming around 250 international Fellows to Aotearoa NZ following two years of border closure as a result of COVID-19. For some, Aotearoa will be a new environment; for others, like Mohan Nair who has family and business connections, it’s more familiar. Director of Authentic Storytelling and New Zealand Fellow Bex De Prospo (C2) sat down with International Investor Fellow, author, and serial entrepreneur Mohan Nair (C7) to hear about his attraction to New Zealand and his insights on doing business here.
Bex: What was it that attracted you to the Edmund Hillary Fellowship and the idea of doing business in Aotearoa?
Mohan: I’ve been visiting New Zealand almost every year for more than 30 years. My mother lives here, as did my father before he passed away, as well as my brother and his extended family. I’ve long had a connection to the land and the people at a very intimate level. Every time I visited here, I felt that the nation of Aotearoa was calling me. I now understand why.
One day, I was sitting in my innovation office in my jacket and tie and a gentleman walked in - Andrew Hoppin, who is a Fellow. He was talking to me about the company he was building in healthcare. He asked me if I had ever heard of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship, even though he didn't know I had any connection with New Zealand.
I believe that coincidence visits the prepared mind. I was ready to reconsider my relationship, and add to my existing love of a country that had already taken care of my immediate family for many years. Sometimes you can’t pay things back, but you can try. This conversation awakened my relationship and I applied.
Bex: How are you working to create impact in New Zealand?
Mohan: New Zealand is a wonderful country with significant assets. I am continuously humbled about my role here. First, I must complete the promise of being an Investor Fellow, which is to look for places to invest. Movac has been so kind to include me as an Innovator-in-Residence and Operating Partner. In that respect, I look at entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies who go through the funnel with Movac. I help them with due diligence and, in particular, understanding the healthcare market as well as others. From that perspective, they have provided me, intellectually, to look at the nation in a different way. The entrepreneurial infrastructure is rich and full of participants, but it hasn’t formulated yet into a stacked, continuous recipe. I may play a role in architecting that, if the nation allows me to. Caramed Capital is building a focused fund in healthcare and I am advising them as well in fund construct and raising. Both these venture funds and others are designing the new venture/entrepreneuring economy.
I also work with a lot of New Zealand companies who are trying to get into the United States as a Beachhead Advisor for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. This, understanding the USA, has its challenges and there’s a role I can play in helping entrepreneurs frame their entry into the country, both in their mind and in the structure of how they can enter and win in markets that they need to win in. I think I can add a unique perspective given that I ran companies in the US and have built infrastructure in the healthcare market. And, of course, being a good citizen of EHF requires me to participate with people like yourself [Bex] and build the global perspective and footprint that New Zealand so much deserves.
Bex: You do have quite a unique lens as an international Fellow who was raised in Singapore before relocating to the States and, eventually, to Auckland. What are some of the insights you can provide for international entrepreneurs about what it’s like to travel, visit and do business in New Zealand?
Mohan: My growing years in Singapore helped me frame what nation-building is like. It was a front-row seat to watching an under-nourished nation become a nation of quality and substance, both economically and socially. My multiple years in the US allowed me to understand what entrepreneurship, in its full sense, is like: building from scratch, being an immigrant in the full form and also understanding what transformational models exist in the country to build both companies and economies. When I entered New Zealand, I already knew the country at a local level through watching people take care of my mother. The citizenry is deep with a sense of values. That’s something that, in a greed-based economy, you lose.
I have an opportunity now to reframe innovation and transformation in a personal way for citizens of New Zealand who are trying to build entrepreneurial companies; to not emulate the [Silicon] Valley or US mentality, but to hold onto their values and express those values in the products and services they create. That recipe of values-based innovation is where I think I can add my biggest contribution. I have to walk carefully and with a sense of humility. Values-based innovation is a new frame where you’re transforming yourself at the same time as the environment around you by building an economically viable environment.
Bex: What are some of the cultural lessons or takeaways that you’ve learned from your time in Aotearoa? Any advice for others about how to navigate the New Zealand social, community and business landscape?
Mohan: We can all get caught up in our egos, but to be a good guest in Aotearoa, one has to never talk down. You should never do that anyway, but particularly not here. You don’t come here to educate, you come here to learn how to serve. Always leave the campfire better than when you visited it the first time. Adding to the value of the land is very much built into the culture here. Never assume that you’re an educator; instead a learner and a seeker of knowledge.
I’ve also learned the idea of being grateful and returning every favour with grace. I’ve seen a lot of graceful favours over all my years of interacting in Aotearoa; people picking options to help every time there’s a chance. The lady that cleans my Mom’s home buys her bread and calls her up to ask what else she needs, every time. You see these acts of kindness which aren’t really acts of kindness but acts of culture that I think are beautiful things that you don’t want to break.
Being consistent is another. Say something and then do it. The New Zealand culture appreciates that. It’s something that you have to practise and keep in your mind all the time. And never enter a conversation assuming that you know more than the other party. What I have learned, through the process of interacting with Kiwis, is that they don’t say what they know, they show what they know through their actions.
Bex: With regard to some of those cultural lessons you mentioned - did you hold those values before you got to Aotearoa, or did you learn them after you arrived?
Mohan: I learned those lessons in many different ways and places - they formed my views on business and personal transformation - but they have been accentuated in the daily lives of many people I’ve seen here.
I think guiding and advising entrepreneurs, learning from them and then carving values-based innovation in the education system as well as the entrepreneurial ecosystem is my contribution. It could be expressed through executive education, through formulating day-to-day coaching with entrepreneurs, or framing that architecture into something valuable that the nation can embrace. That would be cool if I could figure that out.
Bex: What’s your impact focus?
Mohan: I wake up and I sleep dreaming of the opportunity to serve. That never leaves me. I would love to be recognised to serve in the ecosystem of entrepreneurship with the texturing and colouring of the innovator being extremely important, not just the matter of the innovator. Getting your head in the right place and consistently driving the energy of an organisation is where I feel my contribution can add to how New Zealand builds an economy centred around entrepreneurs. That’s where I’m focused and where I’m writing, researching and helping. While I earn my bread and butter from serving entrepreneurs through investments at Movac and Caramed, the other aspect is to be invited to the table where we talk about how to build this ecosystem so that innovation is not something to attain, but something that’s embedded in the culture. The third aspect is to do what is immediate, which is advising two CEOs how to get to the next level and proving their experiment.
Bex: Any calls to action? What do you see as the potential of the Fellowship and the importance of making connections?
Mohan: You know my theory is that if I declare, people will arrive. My declaration is to serve New Zealand and raise the values-based innovation model, and I believe people have already arrived. EHF is filled with an almost intimidating amount of talent. Finding a recipe there and with the trade and enterprise organisations and the entrepreneurs and the greater public - that mix has not been fully realised.
Innovation is not the mark of the elite. It is a community asset that every single individual in New Zealand has the right, and I would suggest the responsibility, to experiment with. That egalitarian model is what I want to see; to find that quiet voice that doesn’t believe he or she or they can be entrepreneurial or innovative and then bring that forward. I want to be a lightning rod for that. If you want to help, I’d say meet someone, structure an innovation story around that person and then help them grow.
Mohan Nair is an Innovator-in-Residence at Movac Capital, a Beachhead Advisor for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise,a business innovation and transformation writer, an entrepreneur and an executive who has worked extensively in the healthcare sector. He’s also a musician, a former TV host and a previous contestant on America’s Got Talent. To learn about Mohan’s work as a serial entrepreneur and strategic transformation leader, visit https://www.movac.co.nz/ and connect with him on LinkedIn.
Watch this 90 second clip on Mohan's impact focus - values-based innovation, driven and inspired by the need to change the world around us.
