For a second year ON: Pitch, a Gen Z start-up ventures competition, has provided student start-ups with the ultimate tools to take their businesses to the next level. This year’s winner was Skillsme, one of the student ventures participating in the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s Start-up Studio programme.

The emotional and mental rollercoaster of life as an entrepreneur was on full display at the finals of the Velocity $100k Challenge. Anticipatory silences were broken with thunderous applause and heart-felt disappointments were softened with encouragement of future prospects.

The full rich experience of University cannot be found inside four lecture walls. University is a time of life in which theory can be put to practice through participating in co-curricular activities to learn skills in leadership, community development and a wide range of other important attributes.

For the second year, staff at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship have provided an opportunity for Business School students to volunteer their time and expertise to help early stage start-ups. This unique experience supports their growth and development through being part of a small team tackling large, global problems.

Fruit growers around the world are making better use of their time, money, and resources thanks to Hectre, an orchard management software co-founded by University of Auckland alumnus Matty Blomfield. Hectre brings to one place a core set of tools designed for growers that are simple to use and accessible for all.

We’ve all been there - signed up for a gym we don’t go to, got a subscription we never use, impulsively bought a ginger slice we didn’t really need. The team at Give Better describe this as ‘meh’ spending - “spending that doesn’t add much joy to your life” - and they are on a mission to transform it into something better by helping you repurpose joyless spending into joyful saving and giving.

Nicholas Bing, a recent graduate of the University of Auckland, was heavily involved in innovation and entrepreneurship while completing his Bachelors of Commerce and Arts. He reflects now on the impact that learning, developing, and practicing entrepreneurship at University has had on his work.

Blues Awards are a university tradition that originated from England. The blue colours of Oxford and Cambridge Universities came to symbolise sporting excellence. At the University of Auckland, Blues Awards have evolved to recognise excellence in other fields such as Arts and Culture, Service and Leadership, and as of 2019 - Innovation. This year there were 9 Innovation Awards recipients, including overall Innovation category award winner, Taylor Grey - founder of Radic Performance.

GovHack is the largest open data hackathon in the southern hemisphere. It aims to bring together people of all abilities who seek to make life better through open data. Usually, in multiple cities across Australia and New Zealand, hackathons would run where participants would come together in venues to form teams, agree on projects, and participate in an open data competition. However, 2020 has been anything except usual.

How organisations acquire new talent is changing rapidly. At the forefront of this movement is Talegent, the New Zealand organisation pushing the boundaries of talent assessment and recruitment through their range of proprietary prediction analytics tools and gamified cognitive assessments.