Brian H Meredith has seen the future of business in New Zealand

April 1, 2008

Brian H Meredith has seen the future of business in New Zealand.

"Would the last one to leave please turn off the lights." "Arrive in New Zealand and step back 50 years." "If it's happening in the world today it will happen in New Zealand - eventually."

These are just three cynical views of our place in the world which, whilst they may have more validity in the past than in the present, do, nonetheless, each hold more than a modicum of truth.

We still rely heavily on our primary industries for export earnings.

We still don't seem to have grasped the concept of added value as an effective means of earning added returns.

We still travel the world looking at what our elders and betters have done and then 'pooh pooh' it before beginning to reinvent the wheel ourselves. And often making a mess of it.

And we still haven't cottoned on to the reality that, in the global knowledge economy, we are as well placed as any other nation to innovate, create and profit from what's between our ears.

The importance of this issue is even greater given the significant changes that we can expect to see in marketplaces throughout the world as the coming generation mature. Generation Y will drive the 'Expectation Economy' and it will look very different from the world that you and I have grown up in.

This is a generation that has never not had the Internet or Google. And this is the generation that is going to be exponentially more demanding of products and services providers than any generation that has gone before them.

Furthermore, this is the generation who will demand products and services that do not yet exist and give the first real meaning to the term "mass customisation".

They are the generation living in a world where they are surrounded by, and totally immersed in, communications devices. Today's youth and tomorrow's adults live in a world of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity.

And in this world, our agrarian economy will just not hack it.

Innovate or die. This must be the message to business both now and in the future. And the wonderful thing is that we are perfectly capable of becoming one of the most innovative nations on earth. But we have to go do it now.

So let's talk about innovation, and in the context of one of the business world's great truths:

There are three kinds of company.

Those who make things happen.

Those who watch things happen.

Those who wonder what the $%#@! happened.

Innovation will only come from one of these types!

There is a significant hurdle to overcome in a journey towards innovation. As Roberto Verganti comments in "Strategies of Innovation and Imitation", published in the Journal of Production innovation Management; "It's very hard to understand what people want."

Traditional marketing theory calls on us to establish market wants and needs and then develop products and services to fulfill those wants and meet those needs. But the real world is nowhere near as neat, tidy or linear. Neolithic man, returning exhausted from hunting for food, with a stone club over one shoulder and the long dark locks of his wife over the other, probably didn't mutter "Core blimey - this is hard yakka. Wish someone would invent the ute!"

And I know for sure that the microwave oven was not the result of a focus group of housewives asking for one. My belief is that a microwave technician accidently stood in front of a dish, got himself zapped and thought "Wow, imagine what this could do to a chicken!"

Innovation is rarely neat, tidy, or linear. Innovation often involves a high degree of uncertainty in terms of market success. As such, it requires vision, courage and risk taking. It also requires a business to be prepared to look at every area of its business in its quest to innovate. It is not just about products or services. Innovation can (and must) be achieved in every aspect of a business including the value proposition, market segments, the value chain structure, the revenue model, competitive strategies and growth strategies.

Above all, innovation needs process if ft is to occur at all.

The first key steps are to think about the future, study what the consumer of the future will look like and then muster every inch of vision, leadership, risk and courage that you can and institute a process of innovation.

Failure is inevitable at some stage. Success is not. But that's the way of the world. Lead or suffer is the new maxim and that won't change in a hurry.

"Innovation often involves a high degree of uncertainty in terms of market success.

 

 

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