If there is a task ahead, it is not to become louder or larger, but clearer. To learn how to sell less of what we have for more—more value, more meaning, more return—rather than endlessly exporting volume and wondering why the margins feel thin.

For decades, discussions have favoured physical assets; land, plant, process;  while the intangible, imaginative ones quietly drain away. We are, after all, a commodity nation, obsessed with producing more of what the world already has, rather than less of what it truly desires. And the eternal question remains: how might we, as Kiwis, learn to sell less for more?

A CEO was caught on camera at a rock concert recently, enthusiastically embracing a female colleague from his company. The irony was the band’s name was Coldplay, though the scene was anything but a cold one. In today’s era, where boardrooms obsess over “appropriate behaviour” while failing to tell authentic stories, the footage spread faster than any brand strategy.

We rarely look down. And yet, the floors beneath us are the silent witnesses to our histories, the secret stages where power, devotion, and human drama unfold. They are more than stone, wood, or marble; they are storytellers, holding the echo of footsteps that have shaped empires, sanctuaries, and sacred rituals.

We’re not online anymore. We’re on-leash. We’re in touch with everyone, but in contact with no one. That thought came to me recently as I caught myself standing, motionless, at the kitchen bench, phone in hand, scrolling through something I can’t even remember now. I wasn’t online; I was tethered. A dog on a lead, sniffing every post.

Welcome to the Beige Age. A world where even the shop assistants, dressed in tonal linen and glued to their phones, seem like hired extras in a minimalist theatre production titled Aisle of Numb.