Entrepreneurs are born to be wild

Business needs to head out onto the highway and look for adventure, says Michael Hayman Photo: Rex

Enterprise columnist Michael Hayman argues that conformity is the enemy of an export ready business culture

“Get your motor runnin’. Head out on the highway. Lookin’ for adventure. And whatever comes our way.”

The lyrics from Born To Be Wild seem fitting for an economy that is finally heading towards full throttle. Indeed you might say our economy is on the “trip of a lifetime”.

That’s the motto of the new 2014 model from motorbike brand Triumph, which epitomises Britain’s turnaround spirit and the ambition for growth.

It is a brand that has been to the brink and back again — once the choice of Hollywood stars like Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen it was Britain’s Harley Davidson. Then it came off the road so badly that by the 1980s it had collapsed into receivership, a potent symbol of the wreckage of Britain’s manufacturing landscape.

In the early days of its comeback, overseen by entrepreneur John Bloor, it was producing a mere 15 bikes a week. Last year the company sold 50,000. And the best bit? The vast majority, 85pc, were exports.

As the world returns to growth, Triumph offers an inspirational example to entrepreneurs about international opportunity and how to take advantage of it.

That is why the brand was such a fitting centerpiece for the launch of the International Festival for Business 2014, a two-month commercial showcase focusing on the North West and designed to deliver a message to the world that this country is serious about business.

It is an event I have been working on for the best part of two years, so I have seen the national effort up close and the preparations that have been made to build an occasion worthy of 250,000 visitors.

Front and centre on the first day of trading was the UKTI British Business Embassy, packed with a stellar cast of British business and the great and good of government.

The focus was on international opportunity and how to take advantage of it. The importance of this was underlined by the IMF last week which marked our export performance as ‘must do better’. It is a challenge, on the evidence of yesterday, that we can do something about.

The importance of this endeavour was emphasized by former Goldman Sachs chief economist, Jim O’Neill who predicted that the world will grow in this decade by 4.1pc. “The key for any company that wants to prosper in that world is to be a part of it,” he said.

The Prime Minister claimed that if one in four rather than one in five companies exported we would wipe out the deficit. All part of accelerating Britain’s economy to become Europe’s largest by 2030.

That means “a sleeves rolled-up, active, industrial strategy” that is “pro-business, pro–enterprise, pro-open markets,” he said.

Central to this is what he called the "rebalanced recovery" and the "British revival". I did think that these two gems could be new names for models straight off the Triumph production line, but rather they are central to his plans to deliver “one of the most business friendly governments anywhere in Europe.”

And while there is much to show for our record in inward investment – the UK secured a record breaking 799 projects in 2013 according to EY’s UK Attractiveness Survey – we still have a long way to go in export.

Anna Botin, the UK CEO of Santander, made a number of pertinent points. Firstly that the UK is a nation of safety first, more successful at trading with its slower growth near neighbours than fast growth emerging markets from further afield. She claimed that Britain was doing twice as much trade with Denmark as Brazil.

Her call to big business, banks and government alike was that there was an ‘obligation’, if the economy is to grow, to play an interventionist part in getting British firms export ready. And that means enabling a generation of firms that can “think big and seize the opportunity.”

Her second point related to the idea of getting business match fit through access to knowledge and digital skills. “We have world class universities here in the UK. Universities provide a ready made network that business can plug into for talent and connections,” she said.

But her primary call to action was reserved for small business and its need for a greater digital presence. She suggested that “half of the UK’s small businesses don’t have a website and a third don’t believe that it is relevant to them.”

For Jim O’Neill this is all part of the need for business to adapt or die as “we are moving into an extremely different world to the one that any of my generation grew up in.”

The Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, told delegates that he has a John F Kennedy quote framed above his desk. It says, simply that "conformity is the jailor of freedom and the enemy of growth."

That conformity is still the day-to-day reality stifling too many businesses. Firms that could go further by going global but lack the resource, knowledge and opportunity to go for it.

It is why the lyrics of Born To Be Wild resonate. Business does need to head out onto the highway and look for adventure. For as the global economy gathers pace what is coming our way is nothing short of a world of opportunity and that needs a new generation of game changing British businesses like Triumph. It’s time to start your engines.

From Telegraph