Every now and then, its good to get out of your comfort zone, away from the warm fire and home cooked food and find out what's going on in the world. With this in mind, I headed to Auckland last week to the Ice Ideas Conference. The Icehouse is 10 years old this year and to celebrate they held a conference, invited business leaders from NZ and overseas and gave them 6 minutes to speak. Icehouse has set a goal of helping 1000 of the 3000 high achieving, exporting businesses needed to grow NZ's economy by 2020. See http://3000.org.nz/ for more detail. They reckon we need capital, talent, networks and insight to do it and challenged the conference speakers to inspire us with their words of wisdom to get there.
Its generally acknowledged that one of the problems facing NZ business owners and managers is the triple B syndrome. In other words, we are happy when we have the boat, the bach and the BBQ. (I'm self confessed one of these). In order to be up there on the world stage we need to set our goals much higher than this. Growing and then selling successful companies, in turn can lead to capital investment in many more companies. We get on a roll, the multiplier effect kicks in and we are away laughing.
Its not just getting there that counts though. Its the way we get there. We need to do it sustainably, be environmentally conscious and hold onto those principles that make us uniquely Kiwi and ultimately, happy.
The biggest challenge is how to get there. The various speakers at the conference gave us some great one liners and metaphors. Such as, 'Be like Sir Ed, preparation was the key. He failed often, but when preparation met opportunity, he was ready' (Rob Adams). There was the metaphor of the wave - 'The cool way to surf is to be paddling when the wave comes. If the wave comes and you're not ready, you'll miss it. Equally, if you learn how to surf, but you're in a place where there are no waves, you wont get to surf'. (Peter Thiel). Our very own, Steven Joyce, MP, said 'NZ doesn't owe anything to anybody. NZ has to get out of bed in the morning and make its own luck'.
Listening to these skilled and knowledgeable people made me want to burst out of the door, hit the world and say 'here I come, baby'. But instead, I can find myself standing alone and thinking, 'OK, but what next'? David Irving, founding chairperson of the Icehouse, came to the rescue. He had some sage advice for business owners. He talked about a disconnect between political goals and language and what these mean to SME owners. We need to translate the economic targets for the country into meaningful objectives for business owners and managers. (Isn't this what every good manager does when leading staff)? We need to make the connection between revenue and expenditure on a national level so that the public understand that increased spending on education and health, for example, can only come when we earn more revenue. And lastly, he talked about improving the respect and recognition of the business community within the general public.
I would like to hear more from him.
For more information and press releases on the conference, check out some of the links below:
http://www.slideshare.net/theicehousenz
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5258833/Invest-in-young-people-conference-told
http://socialmedianz.com/news/2011/07/07/making-innovation-happen-at-ice-ideas-conference/
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