Keynote speaker Tony Nowell, chair of the Packaging Accord’s governing board and New Zealand’s representative on the APEC Business Advisory Council, launched the workshop series entitled Economic Transformation in a Carbon Constrained World – Innovation, Collaboration and Regulation.
Nowell says New Zealand needs critical mass to compete globally and only a handful of New Zealand based companies have sufficient size to do well internationally. Negotiating space on the shelf of retailers that run businesses larger than the entire NZ economy is difficult.
He says, “Smaller manufacturers are being squeezed out by global manufacturers and retailer demands. If this continues local food manufacturing could disappear in ten to fifteen years.”
Nowell adds, “All too often New Zealand businesses fail to compete globally because they lack responsiveness and urgency compared to their counterparts particularly in Asia. We also need to realize that talking and working together does not compromise companies commercially but offers greater opportunities.”
The seminar also heard there is a significant difficulty in connecting a good idea with an organisation capable of making it commercial reality.
Donna Stemmer, director of the Knowledge Performance Research Institute and formerly Chief Knowledge Officer of EDS in the USA challenged New Zealand business to find a way to compete on the world stage.
She says, “Time and space doesn’t play the same role as it did in the industrial revolution so New Zealand business really can compete with the Global 1000 companies if business and research institutions supported by government funding network together as NZ Inc.”
