The Māuipreneur

Abstract

The concept of the Māuipreneur is a metaphor that brings together two apparently unrelated domains interacting to create new meaning or insight that did not exist before the metaphor was encountered. In this case the two unrelated domains are the Māui stories of Aotearoa New Zealand and that of the entrepreneur thus creating the Māuipreneur. The Māuipreneur is the entrepreneur who seizes the opportunity created in the space left void in the movement from tapu (restricted space) to noa (unrestricted space) and through research, development and planning fills it with product. The paper presents a discussion about the Māuipreneur and explains how the theory and associated model relating to the Māuipreneur is found in the stories of the ancestor hero, Māui-Tikitiki-A-Tāranga. This paper was first presented at the Tauira-a-Māui Symposium, Te Whare Wānanga o Raukawa, Otaki, New Zealand, 11-13 November 2009.