A group of Tauranga business people are creating an online community to accelerate the business benefits of collaboration.

The Venture Centre aims to help cut the time and cost of connecting businesses and deliver opportunities for people to collectively create greater value from good ideas.

Venture centre co-founders Steven Vincent, Jo Allum, Pascale Hyboud-Peron and Michael Doerner with one of their speakers. Photo by Tracy Hardy.

Communications consultant Jo Allum from Yojodesign has set up the organisation with Technology Wise directors Michael Doerner and Steven Vincent and Pascale Hyboud-Peron from ThinkAgency.

'Kiwis are natural collaborators, but it takes time to make connections in person and it's holding us back,” says Jo,

'The first aim of Venture Centre is around connecting the community. We have so much stuff going on here at the moment and the stronger and more visible the links in our business community are, the greater our chances of success.”

Jo compares Venture Centre to regional collaboration hubs like Icehouse and Wellington's Creative HQ.

The organisation will promote events and co-create learning opportunities to encourage networking and support business people.

'It's all about people finding people and ideas finding ideas.”

While passionate about fostering business growth, she says the founders are also driven by the ‘selfish' desire to transform the regional economy to stem the loss of young talent.

'We want to help create the vibrant economy with the exciting jobs our children will stay in Tauranga for.”

The organisation, which aims to have its own physical workspace soon, will hold its first on Friday when Professor Shaun Hendy will talk about why Kiwis work harder and earn less than most others in the developed world and what we can do about it.

He co-wrote ‘Get off the Grass' with Paul Callaghan on the need to develop innovative Kiwi businesses. Details: www.venturecentre.co.nz