Mike has taken the scenic route through life, having launched many ships, most of which have come home laden with treasure. Although a couple foundered on the rocks, none have sunk without trace.
A recent diagnosis of ADHD probably explains his predilection for starting new things but more latterly he has built business analytics and innovation training programmes to help others avoid the mistakes and pitfalls he has encountered.
After obtaining Diploma of Fine Arts Preliminary, he decided he’d make more money as a lawyer than an Art Teacher. He studied Law at Canterbury and Victoria Universities, although he didn’t finish his Law degree he did break the World Rocking Chair record. He discovered advertising by mistake, realising the only things he was good at were writing and drawing, signed up with a big Wellington agency.
Early in his career he gained his Diploma in Advertising, and in the process won the Trenchard-Smith Trophy for highest marks in Australia and New Zealand in the Advertising Institute Examinations, he also won the Reader’s Digest Scholarship for New Zealand’s Outstanding Young Advertising Person.
He co-founded advertising agencies; Colenso BBDO and Hutcheson Knowles Marinkovich and eventually became Managing Director of Saatchi and Saatchi. He has been a director of a number of public and private companies before founding Hutch & Co as a strategic marketing and communications consultancy.
He was appointed an Adjunct Professor at Auckland University of Technology in 2016, where he devised and taught an Online Innovation programme. He has a Master of Philosophy degree (1st Class Hons) his thesis was on the alchemy of innovation in New Zealand business. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame in 2021. He has turned the ADHD which he thought to be an embarrassment into a superpower. He has more ideas in a month than most will have in a lifetime.
He has written five books and award-winning innovation and humour columns for newspapers and magazines. He is currently Editor at Large for Idealog magazine. He is a regular radio and television guest and commentator.
He was director of a family building company and in the late 70’s set up Replica Homes, with franchises throughout New Zealand. In 2003 he launched The Lighthouse Ideas Company. He also set up ‘Scarborough Fair’, a Fair Trade/organic coffee and tea marketing company and planted ‘Lonely Cow’ vineyard on Waiheke Island.
He has held numerous Trustee positions; The Foundation for Youth Development and The Graeme Dingle Foundation (18 years), The Spirit of Adventure Trust, The Second Nature Trust (Vodafone Events Centre) and was on the Salvation Army Advisory Board in the mid 1980s. He is currently a Trustee of the Raye Blumenthal Freedman Trust and Chair of the Graeme Dingle Endowment Fund.
