The Story of Popcorn

Popcorn started in 2011 as a collective with a vision to coalesce the best minds in design and engineering for Aotearoa. Hanna joined forces with three product designers from the BizDojo community because she supported design-led thinking and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Over a year, the team took Medicine Mondiale’s POD Incubator from an idea to a physical prototype. From there, original members worked on other design projects together informally.

Popcorn has since transformed from a design collective to consultancy, and now to a climate incubation program. Showcasing what is possible when smart, passionate people work together in a meaningful way. It has methods on how to initiate a venture, how to coordinate and mobilize teams, and how to manage and fund the resources so they are able to survive.

Popcorn is attempting to now seed a shift in the way we go about climate solutions. So many passionate people attended the climate march in 2019. Yet only a handful of meaningful changes arose. This is not enough to overcome the threat of climate change.

Yet there is massive potential lying dormant in the community. The hope is to activate and empower this talent and build new capability with it.

Popcorn wants to harnesses the under-utilised, under-recognised and under-funded talent in New Zealand. The social entrepreneurs, the activists, the artists and inventors.

If Covid-19 taught us anything, it is that the future is here today, and radical global change is possible. It is now the time to take Popcorn learnings out live to the community. We don’t have the time to do otherwise.

If you are keen to join forces, please engage us at one of our channels, (web, social, or directly to popcorn.innovators@gmail.com)