Building CEO Capability for Export into High Value Markets

Summary

The "Asian Market Success" (AMS) project was conducted between 2015 and 2019 and enabled red meat businesses in Western Australia to extract greater value from accessing premium Asian markets through a customer-focused approach using partners who were already established in the market.

The Department of Agriculture, AMS and MLA established this project to support Western Australia red meat businesses to increase their capability, boost international competitiveness and increase their confidence to invest in accessing and developing high-value market growth opportunities.

Three customised programs of work were successfully delivered to senior managers who took part in this project to increase their market capability regarding:

• strategies to engage participation by senior managers of red meat companies who are often time-poor
• focus on entrepreneurial management and innovation management for business growth
• post-program legacy building through documenting the methods used and lessons learnt.

Objectives

This project aimed to inform senior management from Western Australia red meat businesses on how they can use best practice to improve their international competitiveness and substantially expand exports, to attract appropriate investment and capture high value, premium export markets in Asia.

Key findings

Senior managers who participated in the project gained:

• increased understanding of growth opportunities and what to do about them
• learnings about what they should/should not do as a leader to drive global growth in their companies
• increased confidence in their company's opportunities and potential to accelerate growth
• plans to implement changes as a result of attending.

Those who attended the customised programs of work were successful in:

• actioning new business opportunities
• entering new markets
• finding new investments devoted to their business
• creating new joint ventures.

Benefits to industry

It is important for business managers to learn how to lead and build an organisation that is robust enough to support the process of 'going global'.

The long term industry-wide benefits will be realised as the senior managers implement changes and achieve their growth and export objectives and as more senior managers undergo similar capability development.

MLA action

MLA will share the approach taken with this project to other collaborative partners seeking growth options as part of the broader MLA collaborative innovation program offering.

Future research

Further research and evaluation will be needed to follow up with participants of this project to analyse the longer-term impact on their export capability, capacity, international competitiveness and business growth.