Back To The Business Future

Tim Harcourt - Chief Economist at Austrade and Author of Beyond Our Shores

The global economic environment is currently open and buoyant, with many opportunities for a small, open, and stable economy like Australia with a strong resource sector and manufacturing and services capabilities. The world economic outlook is in its most healthy state for at least 30 years and expansion is expected to continue. The strength and sustainability of China’s growth continues, Japan’s economic resurgence has assisted the region, and India has been a major economic growth market in the first decade of the 21st century with Australia a key beneficiary.

The trend towards openness in the global economy has also changed the nature of Australia’s engagement with the world at the enterprise level. Australian businesses are now ‘born to be global’. Manufacturing and services are now more open, and we’ve been able to take advantage of global growth in the emerging economies.

Research estimates there are around 42,000 exporting businesses today with some 15 percent of all SMEs now actively engaged in exporting. Many are also moving beyond traditional exporting and importing, and are globally engaged with the world through licensing, franchising, strategic alliances, and global supply chains.

In short, while the global economy is in its best shape in nearly 30 years, Australia does need to be aware of risks and imbalances in the global business environment– whether of a financial, geo-political or environmental nature. However, economic reform, particularly focussed on capacity constraints in infrastructure and skill shortages, will advance Australia’s international competitiveness and help more Australian businesses, large and small, to prosper in the global marketplace.

Graham Turner - Founder, Flight Centre

After a good year in 2006/07, growth will again be a priority for Flight Centre Limited during 2007/08.

The company will seek to expand its retail, corporate and online footprint globally, through shop and business openings, while also exploring new product offerings and diversified revenue streams, which may see the company transfer its proven retail model into different businesses.

Other priorities for 2007/08 will include continued development of Flight Centre Limited's customer and product strategy and finetuning of the company's bricks and mortar friendly web strategy.

The company will continue to pursue strategic acquisition opportunities in Australia and overseas to fast track its development in some important markets and sectors.

Generally, I believe that 2008 will deliver some significant benefits to Australian travellers. Positive factors include the buoyant economy, the strong dollar, the arrival of new carriers like Etihad, Air Asia X, Viva Macau and Tiger and increased capacity from many of the established carriers.

Dr Alex Maritz - Director of Master of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship

It will take entrepreneurs to accept the new era of business. In the next year we will be living in a chaotic transition period to a new age defined by global competition, rampant change, faster flow of information and communication, increasing business complexity, and pervasive globalisation. The pace of change has become so rapid that it takes a different type of venture to be dominant and marked for an entirely new era of business.

Three forces driving the new economy:

1. Knowledge. Intellectual capital as a strategic factor; a set of understandings used by entrepreneurs to make decisions or take actions that are important to the company.

2. Change. Continuous, rapid and complex; generates uncertainty and reduces predictability.

3. Globalisation. In R&D, technology, production, trade, finance, communication and information, which has resulted in opening of economies, global hyper-competition and interdependency of business.

Forces like technological breakthroughs, economic growth, market evolution, shifts in customer tastes, social changes, and political events can expand or shrink Australian business. This unoccupied territory represents a land of opportunity for the technological and strategic innovators who can see or create it faster than their competitors do. The opportunities are great, but so are competition and the chance of failure.

Customer power surges as customers have many more options today and can choose from alternative suppliers.