Since graduating in 2004, Norman has been on teams building a number of startup companies, notably Endace, which floated on the UK AIM market, and Coretex, which merged with E-Road in 2021. Endace and Coretex (then called Prolificx) were built using the Sellutions Acceleration Process that Norman developed and were 2nd and 3rd in the NZ Deloitte Fast 50 measure of high-growth companies in 2004 (1st and 16th in 2003). He also ran a successful business incubator for seven years from 2004-2010.
Norman wrote a book, Becoming an Entrepreneur, which explored the behaviour of entrepreneurs in startups and which leveraged his Doctoral work from CDU.
Norman has had a concurrent successful career as a director, serving on the Boards of companies in Power, Utilities Construction, Forestry, Bus Services, and on a Holding company managing around $1Billion in assets.
Recently Norman has focused on not-for profit roles. He worked for the Blind Foundation, establishing the Accessibility Tick Programme to assist employers to become more disability friendly and is currently working for SOREC, an organisation set up to focus on issues facing the engineering industry (particularly staffing shortages).
Norman has been a guest speaker in the entrepreneurship programme at the University of Otago, and has assessed MBA projects. He assisted the University to establish the Audacious Business Plan competition and was a judge in the competition's early years.