-
Source: Thinkstock -
Related
My management study only amounted to a few papers; it never
amounted to a diploma. But one thing I learnt was that management
speak was a pile of... gobbledygook, sprinkled with a few
diamonds.
One of my favourites was 'always hire people smarter than you'. It
was the mantra of one CEO or another - I can't remember who - but
the line stuck because it spoke of never resting on your laurels
and suggested a practical humility.
There was a fair bit of management wisdom on display during
Q+A's Innovation Special
this past Sunday, so I thought it worthwhile jotting it down. We
were discussing how we can grow smart businesses in this country,
and the people who have done just that offered some great insights,
both about business and about New Zealand.
1: New Zealanders are great inventors, but pretty rubbish at
marketing and selling an idea. The old number eight fencing wire
mentality is alive and well, yet we lack the marketing smarts. Or
as
BioMatters CEO Candace Kinser put it, when she
arrived from the US she was amazed at the number of great ideas
generated, but equally amazed at how few of them came to fruition
and were turned into multi-national companies. She put it down to a
"false fear" around the borders of this country; in other words,
we're too timid and think too small. Time to get out and get
selling.
2:
Derek Handley , who at 30 is already worth tens
of millions of dollars off the back of his successful company
Hyperfactory, said that no serious start-up should be looking at
just the New Zealand market. You can't build a company of any scale
here. A phrase that's often used these days is that New Zealand
companies need to be "born big". Let's not muck around proving
ourselves in the local market before we think about exporting - we
should be selling to the world from day one.
3: Business never sleeps. Or as Handley said of the
Hyperfactory , "our vision is coming true. We
need to create a new vision". There really is no time to waste. The
pace of innovation is speeding up and a company can go from birth
to world domination in just a few years. So let's crack on.
4: On the other hand, let's not burden ourselves with crazy
expectations.
Geoff Whitcher of Auckland University's Business
School pointed out that Silicon Valley took 70 years to become what
it is today; MIT in Boston has been going 50 years. Yet we talk
like we can become the entrepreneurial hub of the South Pacific in
less than a decade. But good growth takes time, which is why
governments need to think beyond electoral cycles and plan for the
long term.
5: Success comes to those who invest. That's my line but the stats
back me up. Our investment in
research and development is just 1.3% of GDP,
which puts us well into the bottom half of the OECD. Richer
countries research more. And so do richer companies. The top 200
tech companies in New Zealand spend 6% on R&D and reap the
benefits.
6: Size matters... and there's strength in being small.
Rod Drury , the serial entrepreneur behind
accounting software success story Xero, says "the great thing about
New Zealand is that there's this club". The people with big ideas
all know each other, they share those ideas and, rather then being
an exclusive old boys' club, they help the new kinds on the block.
That's economic gold.
7: The nugget of wisdom I liked best came from
Handley . It caught me by surprise. Asked if you
needed to start with a big idea, he said no. The idea comes down
the list, perhaps third. Which isn't what I'd expected to hear.
Most young wannabes are trying to think of the next big thing. But
Handley said the real question is what will be the next big trend.
Or more specifically, what's the next big thing that people will
want. Because you start with demand. You figure out what the market
will want... then you come up with a vision of how a business could
be built fulfilling that need... then you figure out the idea of
how to make it happen. The Hyperfactory puts ads and brands on
mobile phones. Handley saw a demand for that well before a clue
about how to provide that service, and it was the demand that
convinced him he was onto a winner.
So there you are, some business smarts for free. Now go make a
business. Because according to The Icehouse, if we want to get New
Zealand's economic growth back into the top half of the OECD, we
need 3000 globally competitive companies by 2020. So what are you
waiting for?
