Coley/Work/Play/Read

Writing on building purpose-led businesses — extracts from a book in progress, and notes from thirty years of doing the unreasonable thing on purpose.

Essay · All Good Bananas

All Good’s Bad Wrap

It’s taken a while—over five thousand days—but we finally fixed our first customer complaint. Now we don’t know whether to apologise or celebrate.

By Simon Coley

Essay

All Good’s Bad Wrap

Five and a half thousand days to take the plastic tape off a Fairtrade banana. The constraint, it turned out, was the answer.

All Good · Jun 2026
Op-Ed

Valuing Design

Design built more than ten billion dollars of value for New Zealand — then forgot to say so.

BusinessDesk · May 2026
Op-Ed

New Zealand’s Billion-Dollar Bet Against the Future

Despite every effort to stop it, the clean energy transition is winning — so why is the government betting against it?

The Post · Mar 2026