The US$10 billion economy mentality

company must take time to reflect on themselves if they have truly given all they could towards building the company.
By now, you will appreciate the positives that have come out of using the world’ s most popular currency — the US dollar.
It is critical for companies to find ways of managing the present economic challenges in an increasingly competitive global landscape.
While we are counting our gains, all is not well in the West, in the United States in particular.
Recent reports by IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm, estimate that Hurricane Sandy will cost the US economy more than US$60 billion.
A huge figure isn’t it? This can be unimaginable for someone with a US$10 billion mentality.
It makes me wonder even more that if Zimbabwe was to experience a major catastrophe of this nature, will we be able to recover at all?
Probably not, given that most of us run companies on a “now” perspective with no traits of sustainability in sight.
In an economy such as ours, you wonder why some companies are struggling and why some are doing very well.
Yes you heard me right, there are companies that are doing well because they have taken years of building sustainable competitiveness.
Competitiveness at corporate level
The Global Competitiveness Report of 2011-2012 outlined some huge similarities that organisations can adopt to maintain their competitiveness in a global economy.
For instance the stability of the macro-economic environment is an important contributor to the company’s performance.
In our country, most of our financial institutions have let us down with high interest rates.
Closely related to this is health and primary education. It is very true that poor health delivery systems affect company performance.
Companies need employees that can contribute fully to productivity, a constantly ill labour force gives very minimal returns.
Education remains a key sector in our companies. You cannot afford to relegate training, it assists to bridge the gap in knowledge and skills.
Technological readiness remains one of the key factors at company level. Information and communication technologies are key in increasing efficiency within companies.
Gone are the days of manual inventory management systems. ICT access and usage remains critical in participating in a global economy.
Business sophistication points out the need for companies to employ sophisticated business practices that contribute to higher efficiency in the production of goods and services.
At this point you are considering the business networks and interlinkages built over time. Individualism does not work, the economy is in great need of clusters and groupings that are determined to produce results and see change.
Closely linked to this is the aspect of innovation. Numerous opportunities are available for companies with a bias towards innovative activity.
Our sectors need a revamp of the sluggish and tired approach that are being used. A decision has to be made to prioritise research and development issues.
Are you factor driven/efficiency driven/innovation driven?
I firmly believe that we can categorise our commercial entities by also grading them into factor driven, efficiency driven and innovation driven classes.
The report suggests that companies at the first stage, of being factor driven, have reached a point where competition is on the basis of selling basic goods and services.
This is the stage where the consumer appreciates anything with an “at least we have it on our shelves” mentality- where quality is a secondary issue.
As you move up, you start realising that you need to come up with efficient production systems that are key to your survival.
The old habits and tricks must now die a natural death as you focus on improving quality.
As you approach the final stage of innovation driven, you are now looking at competing using new and unique products.
Differentiation becomes key and the business sophistication that we discussed earlier on becomes more critical.
After analysing the issues above — it made me think again, can a US$10 billion dollar economy mentality withstand these pressures. Food for thought.