BE INSPIRED
A first hand account of the conference from Michael Richardson, Industry and Community Relationship Manager, AUT University
Business success comes from a combination of number 8 wire, gumboots and ethnic diversity.
This May I attended the 2012 EPICNZ Conference organised by the Office of Ethnic Affairs. The conference provided knowledge and networking opportunities to help motivate and educate New Zealand ethnic SMEs to reach their true potential.
The conference was nothing short of inspiring for me. The highlight was a plenary session on successful migrants, featuring those who had come to New Zealand and developed innovative and highly successful businesses using a combination of local opportunities and an ethnically diverse workforce.
The migrant business people presenting became successful by employing an ethnically diverse workforce and the global thinking they brought from their country of birth; they then combined these ideas with what we do best in New Zealand innovative and proactive business practices. Their success was attributed to being migrants and utilising the best resources available to them here in New Zealand.
They attributed their success to applying both Kiwi and migrant thinking towards their businesses and partly by employing or contracting a diverse workforce. They built robust, strident and adaptable businesses by combining their global talents with New Zealand's corruption-free and relatively stable economic environment to make successes of their businesses.
The message I took away from the conference is that New Zealand's survival is dependent on embracing ethnic and cultural diversity and combining this with our own Kiwi work practices. New Zealand is small and somewhat isolated, but we have great natural resources, a terrific history of innovation and we punch way above our weight. Let's continue doing what we do best, while embracing an ethnically diverse workforce, which will allow us to unlock our potential and achieve economic success.
Come on Kiwis, our evolution depends on how we adapt to cultural diversity so let's accept that we need ideas generated from different ethnic backgrounds to survive and flourish!
Michael Richardson www.aut.ac.nz
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