A.icehouse – making AI real for Kiwi SMEs

Icehouse is launching ground-breaking training designed to bring practical and strategic  AI transformation to the New Zealand SME ecosystem. 

A.icehouse is a collaboration with AI specialists Ten Past Tomorrow and features a unique mix of online and in-person training, kicking off in October. It comes as a natural extension of Icehouse’s scalable training model, proven to help more Kiwi SME’s grow faster and smarter. 

The founder of Ten Past Tomorrow, Mark Laurence, is a Silicon Valley-trained futurist. Taking an interest in the first iterations of GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) technology in 2019 and watching the world’s smartest minds betting their careers on it, Mark hedged his bets and did the same. He now combines his global futurism training with his AI skills, empowering senior leaders and operational teams to mould AI into their organisations, creating real and measurable performance gains. 

Mark, why should Kiwi SME’s back AI? 

AI is a general-purpose technology that, with the right literacy and skills training, produces radical uplifts in efficiency and productivity, across any and every industry. 

I’ve worked with professional services, agency models, construction and engineering firms, Not For Profits, government agencies, universities - we are able to rewire workflows, standard operating procedures and cultural adoption of AI in every sector and every industry. 

One of the beauties of AI is that the technology is infinitely malleable and therefore can be moulded to become completely personalised to your people and business model. It’s my personal and professional mission to make AI as practical and tactile as possible for as many different SMEs as possible in the New Zealand eco-system and Icehouse is ideally placed to bring the required scale and pragmatism to this training. 

What’s holding people back when it comes to adopting AI? 

AI is not a technology challenge as much as it is a leadership and company culture challenge. The technology is incredibly powerful and equally intuitive. The learning curve to become a powerful user of AI is short, enjoyable, and well within the reach of every knowledge worker in New Zealand. What is holding us back is a lack of AI-literate and skilful senior leaders. Without that literacy and practical skill, leadership teams are unable to fathom the full power of the opportunity waiting for them. Nor are they able to align on a strategic understanding of what AI means to their business and their industry. And they certainly can’t map out a cohesive 24-month roadmap around AI. It all starts with AI-literate and AI-skilful senior leadership teams. Once that traction has been gained, the transformation can be remarkably rapid around AI.   

Much of the resistance is the psychology around AI. I have seen this time and time again with businesses, and it's  industry-agnostic. Once companies receive high-quality. AI literacy and skills training it really does re-shape their mindset. They shift from viewing the tech as a threat to their business or sector to an exciting evolution of what they can do. In a more productivity related example; a financial services business I’m working with has been able to increase output by three times within 18 months, without burning out their people. It’s been a gratifying experience for that team which they didn’t expect before their AI adoption. 

Will this training cover off different AI tools? 

Most organisations are surprised to find that 80-90% of what they need from AI can be achieved from off the shelf, frontier products like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or Claude, costing as little as $20 USD a month. So yes, we cover what tools are best for each business and with good literacy and skills training, leadership teams will also be able to identify for themselves the more bespoke tools that can give them additional benefits in the future. 

What companies need right now is the foundational training so they can use the tools to their full extent, to support their business operations and strategy. It’s fascinating to see how every different business, once armed with high levels of AI literacy and skills, deploys those capabilities in infinitely variable ways to suit their own bespoke needs of their people and strategies. That's the incredible power of a general-purpose technology.  

Ghanum Taylor is leading the Icehouse drive towards an AI literate business eco-system for all Kiwi SMEs. 

Ghanum, why is the timing right for practical AI training? 

Feedback from our alumni shows that Kiwi SMEs acknowledge the benefits of AI but they realise that to find the short and long-term gains the training needs to be strategic and involving more than just the owners of the company – it needs to be adopted organisation-wide. That kind of practical training is what the Icehouse does best. Our goal is to deliver a much deeper understanding of AI across a wide cross section of industries and teams and we’re working quickly, with training starting in October. This is the opportunity for all Kiwi SME’s to purposefully adopt AI with impact and it’s a very real chance for small business to compete on a more level playing field with bigger business.  

Why A.icehouse, why now? 

This training combines Icehouse’s 25 years of SME growth impact,  together with Ten Past Tomorrow’s applied AI enablement to solve the real adoption gap: leaders need strategy and guardrails; teams need hands-on skills that show up in the day to day. The purpose is bigger than a course launch as it’s a rapid lift in national capability so SME's can compete, grow margins, and retain talent in the AI era. We’re moving fast because the tools are already in our workflows; what’s missing is literacy that drives confident, safe, measurable use at scale. 

New Zealand wins when SMEs win. A.icehouse is a practical path to better productivity, better jobs, and better growth. 

How will the training be delivered? 

We have an online offering and face to face options in both Christchurch and Auckland. The key advantage of this training is the layered approach it takes to deepen understanding of AI in your business. There is dedicated content for SLTs (Senior Leadership Teams) which includes understanding the strategic implications of how the technology will rewire operations, revenue models, people and business strategies. And then there is dedicated content and guidance for operational teams which is much more focused on how to actually use the technology responsibly to drive efficiency and productivity. 

Clicking into our website HERE will clearly show what options are available and to register interest.