Entrepreneurship is the key
Scenario planner, Clem Sunter, feels South African government should encourage small business.
THE functions room at Coastlands Hotel was filled to capacity last Thursday, with people keen to hear well-known businessman and scenario planner, Clem Sunter, speak.
The Community Chest organised the talk. Director, Gordon McDonald, said he was pleased by the wonderful response from the Chest’s donors and local NGOs, for this fundraising event.
Clem Sunter was born in the UK and was educated at Oxford University. In 1971 he moved to Lusaka where he started at Anglo American. He moved to the head office in 1973 and became CEO and chairman from 1990 to 1996. He became interested in scenario planning in the 1980s and wrote a number of books on this topic.
“He has a gift of making people think, and has authored 17 books to help people in the field of scenario planning. He recently received an honourary doctorate from UCT for his work in this field. He is a popular speaker and an ardent supporter of Community Chest, for which we are very grateful,” said Gordon.
Clem said there were three things to do to grow your business in hard times, which included innovation, creating new products every year to create new markets. The second thing was to live your brand, and he said your staff should live your brand, and there should be specific rules to define your brand. The last thing is to be the cheaper alternative, and Clem spoke of Mr Price, and how the company has grown, through being the cheaper alternative.
Clem said with regards to South Africa, he offered three scenarios, the Premier League, the Second Division or the Failed State.
“With Marikana, there has been a change in the labour market, so this has affected the country. As it stands, South Africa is 50 per cent Premier League, 25 per cent Second Division and 25 per cent Failed State. The question is whether the government is going to unite or divide the country. We do have pockets of excellence in our country, but are we going to replicate these and encourage people to follow these, or are we going to dumb them down? I feel for South Africa to succeed, we need to encourage entrepreneurship in the country. We need to set a new target. Instead of saying there is a need to create five million jobs, we should be creating one million enterprises which will create the jobs. It all comes down to the expansion of small businesses,” he said.
