Angus Brown
Position: Co-founder of Ārepa, Previously Business Development Manager, The FOODBOWL Field: Food innovation
Angus Brown
Key skills, attitudes and values for innovation
Angus considers the following skills are important for working in innovation:
Energy and drive
Confidence
Tenacity
Good communication.
Skills for innovation: The FOODBOWL
Innovation draws on a broad range of personal skills and attributes. Angus Brown, Business Development Manager at The FOODBOWL, shares his perspective on skills that are commonly possessed by innovative people. He explains how learning about innovation can help foster these skills in young people.
Follow-up activities
Explore other Innovation stories to compare the range of skills for innovation identified. Do any of the skills identified by Angus overlap with those in other Innovation stories? Has Angus introduced any additional skills not identified in other stories?
Compile a list of the skills for innovation identified in this and the other Innovation stories (similar skills could be grouped together). Do you agree that the skills identified are important? Are there other skills you would add? In small groups, discuss and agree on five key skills for innovation. Justify why your group considers these skills to be the most important for innovation.
Background knowledge and experience
Innovation draws on diverse knowledge and expertise. Each person involved contributes a unique knowledge and skill set, which is determined by their particular educational background, the range of experiences they are involved in through their work as well as their life outside of work.
Angus Brown: supporting food innovation
Angus Brown of The FOODBOWL explains what his role as Business Development Manager entails. He describes his career pathway leading to his current position.
Follow-up activities
View The FOODBOWL story and read the article Facilitating food innovation in New Zealand. List all the areas of expertise you consider a food company may need to help them succeed in developing new product ideas and exporting to overseas markets. Discuss how Angus’s skills and career experiences may have prepared him for his current position at The FOODBOWL.
Angus Brown: supporting food innovation
Angus Brown of The FOODBOWL explains what his role as Business Development Manager entails. He describes his career pathway leading to his current position.
Follow-up activities
View The FOODBOWL story and read the article Facilitating food innovation in New Zealand. List all the areas of expertise you consider a food company may need to help them succeed in developing new product ideas and exporting to overseas markets. Discuss how Angus’s skills and career experiences may have prepared him for his current position at The FOODBOWL.
As Business Development Manager at The FOODBOWL, Angus’s role is to facilitate collaboration within the food and beverage industry in New Zealand in order to support and enable innovation. This involves assessing needs and opportunities within client companies and linking them with the appropriate expertise through the New Zealand Food Innovation Network.
Working at The FOODBOWL has opened up my eyes to think that anything’s possible. Whenever I have an idea for myself, I think that it really could be achieved if I just apply the right expertise and the right resource to it.
Angus’s interest and ability to perform this role stem from his personal attributes, his educational background and his experience in the New Zealand food industry, which incudes:
finance and accounting qualifications
working in sales and marketing with a large non-alcoholic beverage company
experience developing his own idea for an innovative beverage product
networking within the New Zealand Food Innovation Network and more broadly in the international food and beverage community through his role at The FOODBOWL.
Update
In 2018 Angus left The FOODBOWL to concentrate fully on his company Ārepa that he co-founded in 2012. Ārepa is a food-tech company focused on nutraceutical grade health products that improve cognitive performance.
Useful link
Find out more about The FOODBOWL and the broader food innovation network on the New Zealand Food Innovation Network website.
This article is based on information current in 2014 and was updated in 2019.
