Co-opertition

Now there is a word that just flows off the tongue, well not really! Co-opertition is probably as difficult to understand as the mere thought of working with your competitors. However, it’s a proven fact that the road to growth is paved with partnerships and you should not preclude competitors from your growth plans. Rarely do you find that a successful business operates alone. They collaborate with other businesses both within and outside their supply chains to establish mutual alliances. They do this because they know that partnering can leverage their own competencies and those of others to help propel their growth.

Collaborate to accumulate. Collaboration is a watchword for the 21st century. We have discovered that working together and engaging with complementary, non-competing businesses is always more powerful than working alone. Of course here will always be some elements of competitive overlap but you should not let this discourage you from collaborating with a competitor that has a process, service or product that would both enhance your business and your relationships with customers.

Collaborative partnerships are enabling. They can help you increase your revenues, reduce your costs and stay ahead of your competition. Through win-win cooperation, pooling of resources and leveraging off mutual strengths, alliances can help you maximise your opportunities while minimising your investment and risk.

If you want growth in the 21st Century keep an open mind! Co-opertition might just be the key to your business achieving its goals.

The Spirit of British manufacturing

If British manufacturing is to be profitable again, it needs to keep on investing in cutting edge technology like industrial automation and add value with technical services such as design for manufacture, or customized services for particular sectors. These services could include R&D assistance, full product box build or even ongoing maintenance and repair. Manufacturing companies no longer just make things! They must offer services that support the customer and enhance the manufactured product. Take a look at Germany; it’s by no chance that Germany is the world’s second biggest exporter of goods after China. When you think of Germany, words such as excellence, complexity, flexibility and reliability come to mind. In Germany they have made their products and processes harder to reverse engineer or copy, giving enough head room and time to innovate further through R&D investments and keep ahead of the curve when copies or alternatives flood the market. Germany is known for the quality of its engineering base - here in the UK we are known for world-class services (second only to the US). Whilst the UK will never be a manufacturing hub for mass production, there is still a good future for companies that concentrate on the long game and work with companies that have high volumes of prototyping and pre-production. UK companies should focus on, and partner with customers who specialize in unique highly reliable products made to last several decades, rather than fast moving consumer electronics devices. The latter products will only ever be prototyped in the UK.

The Age of the Entrepreneur

As the year draws to a close we can see that slowly but surely the world order is changing. The realisation here is that in almost every walk of personal, corporate and even national life, excess will lead to disaster and that, ultimately, common sense must prevail. 

In the last decade we have witnessed many things; a culmination of cheap credit, cheap goods from Asia, greed, government changes and a bloated and bureaucratic public sector have contributed to the Western world landing on its knees.

Internet enabled communication and the emergence of social media have levelled the playing field and facilitated an unprecedented transfer of power and wealth, not only from West to East, but also within our own societies. Luckily, many entrepreneurs see this transfer as beneficial; entrepreneurs are quick to adapt and fiercely resilient and will bravely change the course of business to suit the prevailing business conditions.

Welcome to the age of the entrepreneur. 

Broadly speaking entrepreneurs are creative, passionate, hard-working and generous. Not only do they create wealth for themselves and society, they also help others climb the ladder of success. They disrupt the status quo and act as a force for good, using their influence to support sustainability, employment and opportunity and recognising that the future is about people and planet, as well as profit. 

We are suffering from many ills, but reality is returning. Entrepreneurs represent a huge percentage of the SME and Micro business sectors and whilst creating employment for themselves they make a huge impact to the employment market. The West must now concentrate on finding the means to support the lives we have become accustomed to. To do this we need to raise the bar of efficiencies, support manufacturing and export, and be more protective of our core competencies. Bring on the entrepreneurs!