Now is OUR time to be the Value Innovation Generation.
Walk into any decent marketing program or marketing subject and the first piece of reading you'll be asked to complete is Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt. His 1960 Harvard Business Review article was a ground-breaking piece of thinking that introduced some of the most influential marketing ideas of our time. Levitt was able to articulate a profound warning (and explain the consequences) to those industries and businesses that remain focused on mass-producing more and more of the same product; thinking that there will always be someone on the other side to buy it at a profit.
I encourage everyone from the agricultural industry to read it, with the industry in mind. It's a great lesson in being market-centric, not product-centric; and defining the purpose of your industry correctly.
The article is full of answers to the greater question that I see on many peoples faces; that is 'how is it that after being told to invest my equity into increasing productivity, because I was also told there is a food and fibre boom and everyone wants my products, I am now making less money than ever before?'
In 2008 the South Australian Government's Thinker in Residence was Professor Andrew Fearne, an international expert on value chain thinking who was here to review and provide inspiration for the food and wine industry. He gave a detailed assessment of how effectively we are value-adding our food and wine products.
His final report in 2009 started like this: 'an overwhelming sense of denial. She'll be right. The rains will come. Governments will fix this. Somehow something will change - that means we can carry on the way we've always acted before. That's, I think, fundamentally the vulnerability I see. Instead of asking what it is we should be producing in the first place - expecting, wishing and hoping things will sort out; so we can carry on doing the things that we've always done before.'
He warned our food and wine industries to not just keep producing more and more of the same.
Today I read the following comments from a recent food industry conference: 'the rapidly changing food and packaging supply industries will continue to push producers and manufacturers to innovate and improve their business models.'
'If you’re sitting in a company that’s not looking bright, and is not innovating, the future is not bright for you in Australia.'
I've skimmed across some pretty chunky (but reoccurring) themes to raise my point, but the future is clear - we can't keep going the way we are going, as very soon a large proportion of the industry will no longer be with us. They'll have gone bust trying to deliver more of the same; or gone bust because we lost our markets.
So I'm putting the call out to all of us that will be working in the industry over the next 20 years: I declare that we are the Value Innovation Generation and we have the next 20 years to pull all of our industry and Government sectors together and start working as an industry fraternity and alumni, hell-bent on making sure that when our job is done, Australia (as a whole) is a global marketing force to be reckoned with for food, fibre, wine and others.
Now there's an industry I would want to work in, if I was deciding what to do and study after secondary school.
In 2008 the South Australian Government's Thinker in Residence was Professor Andrew Fearne, an international expert on value chain thinking who was here to review and provide inspiration for the food and wine industry. He gave a detailed assessment of how effectively we are value-adding our food and wine products.
His final report in 2009 started like this: 'an overwhelming sense of denial. She'll be right. The rains will come. Governments will fix this. Somehow something will change - that means we can carry on the way we've always acted before. That's, I think, fundamentally the vulnerability I see. Instead of asking what it is we should be producing in the first place - expecting, wishing and hoping things will sort out; so we can carry on doing the things that we've always done before.'
He warned our food and wine industries to not just keep producing more and more of the same.
Today I read the following comments from a recent food industry conference: 'the rapidly changing food and packaging supply industries will continue to push producers and manufacturers to innovate and improve their business models.'
'If you’re sitting in a company that’s not looking bright, and is not innovating, the future is not bright for you in Australia.'
I've skimmed across some pretty chunky (but reoccurring) themes to raise my point, but the future is clear - we can't keep going the way we are going, as very soon a large proportion of the industry will no longer be with us. They'll have gone bust trying to deliver more of the same; or gone bust because we lost our markets.
So I'm putting the call out to all of us that will be working in the industry over the next 20 years: I declare that we are the Value Innovation Generation and we have the next 20 years to pull all of our industry and Government sectors together and start working as an industry fraternity and alumni, hell-bent on making sure that when our job is done, Australia (as a whole) is a global marketing force to be reckoned with for food, fibre, wine and others.
Now there's an industry I would want to work in, if I was deciding what to do and study after secondary school.
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