Who we are

Dorenda Britten Ltd was established in 2015 by Dorenda Britten. She is a motivated woman with a goal to make an impact in the world. Her background is wonderfully varied and entrepreneurial, both in New Zealand and overseas. Her career began in design, moved to cargo shipping in the Pacific, then to property development in New Zealand, before returning to design. She has four adult children.

Dorenda is a challenger and future-thinker, whose work is founded on a design principles platform. Her small team, including university students, work hard to help turn her aspirations into reality.

What we do

The power of cognitive diversity in teams to discover solutions to our big social and environmental challenges. This is the driving force behind a movement that Dorenda has been predicting for a long time. Her teaching, mentoring and speaking engagements all focus on how to prepare and achieve this change.

Our team believes it is detrimental to the growth of society to limit business to financial gain. We believe that an ethical design process will help bridge the broadening gap that has opened up between society, the environment and business. Dorenda has developed tools and methods to bring diverse people together, respect their differences and bring forward ideas guided by a set of universal principles.

Throughout our European history, we have leveraged our natural environment to help us sell our products. We have been great at coming up with pragmatic solutions that enhance the lives of some, in the belief that a rising tide lifts all boats. We have been unprepared to acknowledge the effect of our development policies on our people or our natural world.

It has become apparent that we have not thought broadly enough, or deeply enough, about the implications of our design processes. Our design and innovation teams are generally populated by middle class Europeans who have had the advantage of professional education. The outcome of this is that our thinking, although we consider it diverse, tends to lean towards a collective life experience. Engaging diverse minds will bring multiple advantages both at a societal and business level.

Why we do it

Dorenda Britten Ltd is a business for good with the goal of creating value for the good of people, planet and profit. The company is focused on the way we design products, systems and services, ensuring that they serve the real needs of real people.

In a fast moving world, the need to quickly engage teams of diverse thinkers to confront big challenges is becoming increasingly critical. Diversity is commonly recognised as a cultural and gender differentiator, but we focus our attention on cognitive diversity. We believe cognitive diversity is the key to uncovering quality ideas that are future focused. If we embrace diverse thinking we will enhance social engagement and decision-making skills nationally.

The work of Dorenda Britten Ltd is driven by the value we place on sustainable design practices that acknowledge responsibility for society and the environment while securing a healthy financial future. We see this as aligning with New Zealand’s brand.

We want to embrace a new way of creating value that can change the world for good. We believe that our principles-based Design Thinking methodology can help to distill values and embed them in all that we do.

What we do about our ideas

Click to watch our submission to the Christchurch City Council