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Writer's pictureDorenda Britten

How to "Sell" the Future



Talking to my good friend Mike Hutcheson (Hutch as he is known) recently about how to “sell” the future. Mike has vast experience in packaging ideas in their simplest form, having come from the advertising world.

I also have experience in advertising, albeit as a cog in a very large wheel. Let me tell you about it. Having failed to complete my design studies at Canterbury University I somehow landed a job at a Christchurch-based advertising agency, J. Inglis Wright, based on my artistic and drawing abilities.


Imagine, if you will, the studio filled with young and old men when you are the only female, save for office and reception staff. I didn’t understand “power imbalance” in those days, nor were any of the slogans we use now to defend gender equity thought of in a corporate environment.


So, what we have now is increasing understanding of gender and culture diversity.


A gap still remains in our understanding of diversity however, and that is neurodiversity. Thankfully a number of good people in New Zealand are working hard to bring a better understanding. Their initiatives address our lack of knowledge of what neurodiversity means and how incapacitating it can be to those wanting to participate fully in life and work.


Of all the neurodiversity’s though, dyslexia is the most prevalent, but perhaps the least understood. I say least understood because it has been overlooked in our education system, and as a result is too easily disguised. The workarounds that dyslexic people often resort too to disguise their “shortcomings” are nothing if not brilliant and deny the belief that dyslexics are not intelligent and motivated.


Dyslexia is the focus of our new start-up we call Unlock Innovation. How interesting it is to me to reflect that not only was I a female in a male’s world, but a dyslexic thinker. My dyslexia, only identified in 2023, has finally made sense of my capacity for big picture thinking, for bringing together disparate ideas, for my high-risk threshold. It has certainly not affected my reading and writing abilities.


One of the biggest discoveries in my life has been the sheer diversity within dyslexic-learning communities. In other words, one size does not fit all.

So, what did the advertising agency in the 70’s teach me? It taught me how lies are sold, it taught me how easy it was to infect people’s thinking and desires. It showed me gender imbalance at work.


The advertising world Mike inhabited 10 years later had certainly changed in its attitude towards gender diversity but still failed to value and protect neurodiversity as a source of creativity and future-thinking.


Mike and I are just two people convinced we must draw on those very skills that I didn't feel comfortable with, in order to create the future we desire.



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