Monday, January 6, 2014

Don’t Diversify, Intensify

This article first appeared in Finweek, 12 December 2013
 
Very often I meet entrepreneurs who, after achieving some success in their businesses, start to pursue opportunities outside of their core area of expertise. They proudly tell me they are “diversifying”. Unless you are in the business of managing stock portfolios, entrepreneurs ought to be very careful about ‘diversification’, particularly those in the early stages of their business journeys.
 
When you start managing multiple business interests in multiple industries you lose a key ingredient critical to success: FOCUS. You are suddenly expected to become knowledgeable about various industries with their own unique revenue and cost drivers, competitors, dependencies and peculiar risks. You are the most valuable asset in your business; you need to protect your utilisation.
 
Diversification can easily lead to taking your eye off the ball as you try to be a Jack of all trades and master of none, as they say. Others often get so excited by their new ventures and bored of their core business that they start falling in love with being called ‘serial entrepreneurs’.
 
Be careful that this excitement isn’t infatuation – otherwise known as umlilo wamaphepha in my home language. There was a time when conglomerates were fashionable, but even the largest conglomerates soon realised there was more value in perfecting one’s core business than holding equity interests in different sectors.
 
In January 1999, South African Breweries announced: “As part of SAB’s strategy to refocus on its core beverage businesses and hotel and gaming interests, the company has already disposed of a number of its diversified investments, namely Amalgamated Retail Limited, Associated Furniture Companies Limited, Conshu Holdings Limited, Da Gama Textile Company Limited, The Lion Match Company Limited, OK Bazaars (1929) Limited, and SAB’s clothing and footwear division. In order for SAB to further its strategy of focusing on its core operations, and for SAB shareholders to benefit directly from Edgars completing its own repositioning programme, the board of directors of SAB believe it to be in the best interest of SAB shareholders to undertake the unbundling.”
 
This was an announcement to dispose of SAB’s share in Edgars, after a series of other exits from ‘non-core’ businesses. The SABMiller that we know today is the world’s second-largest brewer, with operations spanning six continents including brewers in the US and China. This is after a number of hefty acquisitions in the past 15 years or so – all of which were in its core business of brewing and distributing beer. Other than a 40% share in Tsogo Sun, SABMiller has very little outside its core.
 
That’s partly why it is the best in the business. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Aliko Dangote and Elon Musk are all internationally renowned for very specific products and services, in very specific markets and industries.
 
Even when they expand their operations, it is often within a very similar market segment, consumer market or product range. They don’t diversify, they intensify. Take Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, for instance. He has started PayPal (later sold to eBay), Tesla, SpaceX, and Hyperloop. His current businesses have a common thread: revolutionary transport solutions. Tesla Motors makes the coolest electric cars in the world, SpaceX flies cargo to NASA’s International Space Station some 400km above earth and wants to eventually transport humans from Earth to other planets, while the Hyperloop, though still an idea, is a mode of high-speed transportation that Musk believes could revolutionise travel as we know it.
 
Like many other successful entrepreneurs before him, what Musk has done is intensify, not diversify. He has taken his passion, added his very special skill, and applied it to a very specific industry and opened a new world of transport and travel. Take a leaf from the best. Explore strategies that extend your core business into new innovations, new markets, new products, brand extensions and all that helps intensify your business; and be sure to take this advice from arguably the most successful investor of our time, Warren Buffett: “Stay in your circle of competence.”

Make Entrepreneurship Central to National Policy

This article first appeared in Finweek, 14 November 2013.
 
South Africans often criticise their Government for formulating great policies but failing to adequately implement them. While there have been pockets of brilliance in policy formulation that have served the country well, allowing us to navigate the stormy seas of the global economy, there are also a fair number of policies that have had the unintended consequence of restricting progress. Twenty years into democracy, it is time we wake up from denial and shrug off our protectionist outlook and change what doesn’t work while improve what works.

For starters, we must make entrepreneurship central to national economic policy formulation. I am talking about entrepreneurship, and not SMME development. I am talking about a deliberate national economic policy that seeks to back entrepreneurs and innovators on a serious scale, to create new products and services, access new markets, spawn new industries and, over time, create meaningful employment and grow the tax base.

I am not referring to a drive to support small businesses that remain small and only employ the founder and a handful of unskilled labour. I am talking about the state having a mechanism to identify, develop and fund entrepreneurs and innovators who show great potential for the ultimate benefit of South Africa. I am talking about a mechanism that could have identified an Elon Musk. I am talking about a mechanism that should be developing, supporting and funding a Siyabulela Xuza – the former praise singer turned science and technology entrepreneur.

The good news is that we’ve done this before. It wasn’t as structured as I propose, but it yielded unprecedented results – the benefits of which we still enjoy today. I have told the story of this gentleman before. It is very relevant in the context of how a different outlook can lead to great benefits for the state.

Meet Hendrik van der Bijl. Born in 1887, he graduated from what is today known as Stellenbosch University with distinctions in mathematics and chemistry. After university young Van der Bijl decided to further his studies in Germany. After completing his studies, he met Robert Millikan, the eminent American physicist. Millikan was impressed with the young man and recommended the young scientist to executives from the Western Electric Company. Van der Bijl accepted their job offer and moved to New York.

The first successful transmission of speech by radio was made in 1915. Later that year speech was transmitted by radio over a distance of more than 8 000km. Van der Bijl was the young scientist who managed to get the amplifiers to work to the precise tolerances required over this very long distance. By 1917, Van der Bijl had made significant contributions to the development of the photoelectric cell and by these means, also made a significant contribution to the development of the television.

Back in SA, General Jan Smuts had assumed the reins of power in Government. Smuts believed that a scientific adviser would be an asset to his Cabinet. Van der Bijl was persuaded to return to SA and in 1920 he left the US. He soon started making plans for a public utility to provide the South African industry with cheap electricity. The capital would be provided by the State and the company would be run on commercial lines.

In 1923, the Electricity Supply Commission (Escom, now Eskom) was founded. Van der Bijl borrowed R16m from the State and began putting his plans into action. From the outset the undertaking was a success and within 10 years van der Bijl was able to pay the State loan back.

What we know as Vanderbijlpark today is named after this great South African.

We have an opportunity to learn from our history. We have an opportunity to redefine the ideology and bigger purpose of entrepreneurship in re-positioning our nation as the game-changing economic leader of our continent. Let’s make entrepreneurship central to our economic policy.