Waikato Business News April/May 2019

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS April/May 2019
3
Exciting, challenging, scary
world full of opportunities
In an increasingly divided world,
businesses need to forget about the
middle and instead look to the margins
for their survival.
By RICHARD WALKER
“The average is always
wrong,” Avon CEO Jan
Zijderveld urged a Hamilton
audience. The trick, he
said, when it comes to data
is to look for the peaks and
troughs.
He was the keynote speaker
at a day-long Future of Work
conference organised by the
University of Waikato’s Management
School in April.
The energy transition
to a low carbon future
is key. “If we solve
the energy issue we
solve many of the
other problems.
With polarisation a crucial
feature of the global economy,
in business there are two
models of success, he told an
audience of about 200 during
a bracing, hour-long presenta-
tion with a global perspective.
They are to go super-premium
or super-value. “If you
think about any market and
you go for the middle, you are
dead.”
That plays out, for instance,
in the food and nutrition sector.
“Look at food. We have
one billion people that are
overweight, we also have one
billion people that are still
struggling. So they need food
and need nutrition and both
are business opportunities,
but they are actually the opposites.”
Zijderveld, a Distinguished
Alumnus of Waikato University
who graduated with
a Bachelor of Management
Studies in 1987, referred also
to a “new debate” concerning
the educated and the uneducated.
“Seventy percent of the
graduates in Scandinavia are
women. And we are going to
have a whole generation of
angry young men. They are
the soccer hooligans, they vote
for the parties that are protest
parties because they have no
future. They see no future for
themselves, and they are a
huge political challenge.”
Jan Zijderveld told his Hamilton audience the world is waking up to the challenge of sustainability.
Globalisation had given a
lot, taking half a billion people
out of poverty, but was under
threat, being played out in
Brexit and US President Donald
Trump’s desire to build a
border wall.
Zijderveld said the “silver
economy” represented another
area of polarisation, with a
“big group” of wealthy older
people, who have no need to
economise when it came to
spending, and a younger population
that was “probably
going to be on less.”
“So you get a real polarisation.
The average age in
Europe is mid-40s - well,
that's exactly the wrong age
to target. It's actually the old
people you should target or
the younger people. So again
you need to de-average and
the problems and solutions and
opportunities for both are very,
very different.
“So the big message I
wanted to leave is de-average.
Whatever data pool you look
at, de-average. The opportunities
are not in the averages.”
Zijderveld, who was president
of Unilever’s $14 billion
European business before taking
up the Avon position in
February last year, also covered
environmental challenges
and technological change in
his address, which was followed
by a panel discussion
and workshops.
The second “big thought”
was that the planet is under
stress. That came with a challenge:
“We've got to think
about our responsibilities as
citizens but also as business
people. What do you do: are
you part of the problem or are
you part of the solution?”
The energy transition to a
low carbon future is key. “If
we solve the energy issue we
solve many of the other problems.”
Almost all leading organisations
in Europe had made
a commitment to be carbon
neutral or better, he said, citing
Shell as investing “massively”
in the transition.
Continued on page 4
When buying or selling a business in the Waikato
Talk to the people who get results.
Jono Kennedy
021 045 3871
Otago
Greg Dunn
027 293 0377
Tony Begbie
029 200 6515
Scott Laurence
027 473 5425
Graeme Finch
027 495 3413
Craig Paul
021 786 496
Being in business for yourself is one of the most
exciting and rewarding things that you can do. It can
be challenging, it can be tough, but the satisfaction
of running and building a successful business is
immense. So if you’re wanting to sell a business you’ve
built up over time, or want to buy an independent future
for you and your family, we’re the people to talk to...and
we are based right here in Hamilton.
Denise and Grant Lumsden talk to
Mike McRoberts about how together
they grew their Totalspan franchise
business.
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