Biographies

Kenneth Irons is a New Zealander, a company owner and director who has lived in five countries working for five decades in five industry sectors – firstly, in the health sector (he graduated as a pharmacist), then the media sector, the aviation sector, the corporate and commercial banking sector, and for the last decade, the agritech sector. While the sectors themselves are disparate, Kenneth followed a unifying theme – namely, how governments, and especially how large corporates, work with businesses in the medium enterprise segment, those firms generally with 20-100 employees – too big to think small and too small to think big. The relevance Kenneth’s perspective has to agritech in general and to standards and data interoperability in particular, is that governments and global ag and agtech corporations often overlook the importance of growing or growable businesses that have valuable IP, technologies, products and services, solid balance sheets, and the agile capacity to bring new products to market, even if only locally or regionally rather than globally.​ In presenting to this forum, therefore, Kenneth will apply the lens of commerce to the conversation, emphasising the importance of AI, IoT, and like technologies to be accessible to businesses who have products that can be more valuable globally in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals.