Someone else has identified what I’ve been saying for years in that the Government strategies for supporting small and medium size businesses are woefully ineffective.

For a long time now I’ve felt that the Governments strategy of creating 100*$100mill businesses in New Zealand is a flawed strategy. My reasons for assessing as such are follows;

  • Arguably a $20mill business is more in keeping with the majority of our entrepreneurs desires or expectations
  • $100mill businesses are often targets for takeovers by predominantly offshore based businesses
  • It should be a much easier job to scale 1000 $1mill businesses to reach $10mill each than to create 100 big businesses (and for NZ’s purposes we can call $100mill big business)
  • If a business is going to readily reach $100mill, arguable it can do so on it’s own without the help (and most times the help is paltry) of bureaucrats

Sure Trademe, Weta and Icebreaker are seen as business heroes, but in terms of job and wealth generation, the statistics must show that it is the next tier of businesses, the $5mill-$20mill players who form the bulk of our economy.

John Key’s attitude seems to be that Governments have no place in business support, rather natural attrition should pick the survivors. While I don’t necessarily agree with this viewpoint it’s probably better than throwing resource at enterprises that can scale without help.

I can’t imagine this report will be given much time in the ‘hive, from appearances the MED’s small business advisory group was completely ignored as well – and they were Government appointments!

Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.

2 Comments
  • Falafulu Fisi |

    John Key’s attitude seems to be that Governments have no place in business support, rather natural attrition should pick the survivors.

    Now, Ben my take on this as someone who is halfway between being a Libertarian & an Act supporter, I am against the idea that the Government should support private businesses at all. They shouldn’t be there picking winners. Right Hemisphere was given an interest free loan by the government last year, however Burger Fuel hasn’t received a similar favor from Helen. This practice of favouritism should be stopped. Private businesses should stand on their own 2 feet and the risk should be the business owners concern and not the taxpayers.

  • You certainly have a valid point of view FF

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