NZ's AI Moment Is Now, and Most Are Missing It
A live survey of 40 Wairau Valley business owners showed how few NZ firms are acting on AI. Here is what we saw and what it means for you.
Last night I stood in front of 40 business owners in Wairau Valley; people running real businesses, employing real people, serving real customers. We ran a live survey. The answers were uncomfortable.
This was in partnership with Business North Harbour, the industry group serving businesses across our region. These weren’t strangers on the internet; they were owners and operators with skin in the game.
What 40 local business owners told us
I asked whether they’d had a genuine AI moment in the last 90 days; something that actually changed how they work. 52% said no, or weren’t sure what I meant. Only 7 out of 29 called it a game-changer.
I asked how they felt about where their business is on AI right now. 78% were stuck, just getting started, or not feeling it at all. Two people said they were flying.
I asked what word described theirAI journey. The most common answer was learning. Then cautious, slow, limited, tentative, terrified, and zero.
Then the one that stopped me cold. If you had 10 spare hours this week to spend on AI, what would you do? 64% said they honestly wouldn’t know where to start.
Not “I’d need a plan.” Not “I’d need help.” Just: no.
Last question. Would you know if your best competitor was 12 months ahead of you on AI? 75% said probably not. They wouldn’t even know they were losing.
This isn’t a Wairau Valley problem
EY just released one of the largest AI sentiment surveys ever run; 18,152 people across 23 countries.
Globally, 84% had used AI in the past six months. In the markets EY calls “pioneers”; India, China, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the UAE; autonomous AI usage is sitting at 24%. These are places we used to think of as catching up.
Notice who isn’t on that list. Australia. The UK. New Zealand.
We consistently rank among the slowerAI adopters in the developed world. Not at the bottom, but not where a country that punches above its weight in innovation, agriculture, sport and culture should be. Countries with a fraction of our infrastructure are running past us because they saw the opportunity and moved.
The thing people say they want, but aren’t doing
Here’s the contradiction.
When I asked the same room what they’d focus on if theirAI blockers vanished tomorrow, 54% said strategy and 50% said sales and marketing. They know what they want; they can picture the upside.
But 40% said the number one thing holding them back was simply not knowing what’s possible. Not budget. Not expertise. Not the team.
They don’t know what they don’t know. That isn’t a technology problem; it’s a leadership problem. And it’s solvable.
Our generation’s turn
Every generation has had its moment. The one that adopted computers when most people called it a fad. The one that built a website before competitors knew what a domain name was. The one that got their first staff member onto email.
In every case, there was a group that moved early and a group that waited. The ones who moved didn’t necessarily have more money or more time; they had more conviction that the thing was real, and more willingness to figure it out before it was obvious.
We’re in that moment now. The window isn’t open indefinitely.
The EY data shows trust concerns are real; 66% worry about AI being hacked, 73% can’t tell real from AI-generated content. Legitimate concerns. But trust concerns have never stopped a technology from reshaping an industry; they just slow down the people who let those concerns become excuses.
Two things you can do this week
1. Find out where you actually stand.
Before you can move, you need an honest baseline. OurAI FluencyAssessment takes a few minutes and shows you where your business sits on the readiness curve, and the moves that will actually shift the dial.
2. Get your whole team into one room for a workshop.
Not knowing where to start was the most common blocker we heard last night. OurAI Workshop is built for that exact problem. No theory slides; just practical, applied AI for the work your team actually does. We’ve run close to 100 of these across Auckland and New Zealand.
Or if you’d rather just have a conversation first, grab 30 minutes with me.
The businesses that will define the next decade are making decisions in the next six months. They’re the ones moving before it’s obvious.
The question isn’t whetherAI will change your industry. It already is.
The question is whether you’ll shape what that looks like, or inherit someone else’s version of it.
Callum Galloway is Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at iT360, an Auckland-based managed IT and AI services company. iT360 works with businesses across New Zealand to make technology a genuine advantage; not just a line item