Mt. Beautiful Founder David Teece is the quintessential Kiwi: curious, adventuresome and utterly devoted to his home country. His family arrived in New Zealand in the 1860s from Shropshire, England, eager to seize fresh opportunities in a country undergoing a massive gold rush. They landed in Lower Moutere, an area known for hops, sheep and dairy at the time, but which has since become regarded as an excellent region for viticulture.
Being raised by generations of farmers shaped David’s work ethic, resourcefulness and business acumen from an early age; being a New Zealand boy through and through instilled in him a deep love of the outdoors, along with the desire to experience everything this rugged, expansive landscape offered. “It’s almost impossible not to be outdoorsy when you are in New Zealand,” David declares, recalling times spent boating, fishing, hiking and the occasional hair-raising river crossing by what he describes as “hanging on for grim death” to a set of wires.
That rough-and-tumble New Zealand boy grew up to be one of the world’s most highly cited scholars in business and economics. In addition to founding Mt. Beautiful and Teece Family Vineyards and Farms, David J. Teece is the Tusher Professor in Global Business at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He is also the director of Tusher Center for Intellectual Capital. David has authored over 30 books and 200 scholarly papers, and he is co-editor of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management.
The seeds for his successes were planted on his family farm, where he observed the entrepreneurial process first-hand. His father identified a need for reliable transportation from outlying farms to the marketplaces in the cities, and launched a trucking company that would do just that.
