Management
Issue No. 6 - July/September 2002
SA Industry Plans 'Deliver'
by Kenneth Lyons
The last decade has seen tremendous growth and profitability for both the seafood and the wine industries. Like most successes in business however, this did not happen without a guiding hand.
Recently I was sitting next to Professor Richard Blandy at a briefing by the Reserve Bank when a graph showed South Australia’s exports for the past two year surpassing the national average. As Richard pointed out, the reason related to seafood, wine and cars. Interestingly they all had in common an industry plan involving the government.
So, there is certainly something else above the exchange rate and international prices, driving industry development.
Recently the Premier Mike Rann launched a new industry plan, this time for the State’s dairy industry. Basically it is a plan to grow the industry over the coming decade.
Specifically for dairy, it is a plan of how the state government, dairy processors and dairy farmers (the players), by working together (requires input from all players), can generate net benefits for the players (the objective) by growing the industry (the key strategy).
I have a theory that while South Australia has some disadvantages in relation to economic development, it has a big advantage when it comes to getting industry plans “up, running and performing”. This relates to the relative ease of getting all the key players (those with the knowledge and those with the ‘keys’ to implementation) around the planning group. The planning group in the case of the dairy plan was a Dairy Industry Development Board chaired by Perry Gunner —the man who took Jacobs Creek to the world. Every industry will have it’s our own unique way of establishing it’s planning group—the “campfire”.
Experience with these industry plans has reinforced the importance of the following issues:
- The process must be based on the latest and very best management tech...
