On Friday, 7 September 2012, I talked to a group of leaders touring from Pakistan, the topic ““Defining business success and the relevance of the environment on business”

The group was touring Australia through an AusAid Australian Leadership Award scholarship (http://www.ausaid.gov.au/scholar/pages/ala.aspx).

There were 20 people in the group, and the intention was to visit a number of successful enterprises and get an understanding of how SME’s are approaching dealing with the environment in Australia.

The group stated in Queensland, visited Melbourne and will be in Sydney next week, before returning to Pakistan where they will share what they have learned with SME’s in Pakistan.

Of the 20 people in the audience some 4 were academic, and the remainder were advisers from the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) of Pakistan (www.smeda.org.pk).

Coincidentally, SMEDA is very similar to Enterprise Connect (http://www.enterpriseconnect.gov.au/Pages/Home.aspx), a great initiative designed to help good Australian businesses improve their performance.

I have been engaged as a Business Adviser Clean Technology Innovation Centre through Ai Group as part of the Enterprise Connect initiative, so as a group we had a number of interesting observations about the similarities and differences in SME’s in Pakistan and Australia.

A copy of my presentation is attached. Defining business success and the relevance of

There were a couple of great things the visitors really enjoyed about their stay in Melbourne.
They were able to visit the following three innovative and environmentally conscious businesses:

Cookers: http://www.cookers.com.au/store/index.asp where Peter FitzGerald showed them around the site and explained how it has been developed to be environmentally focused.

Close the Loop http://www.closetheloop.com.au where Steve Morris explained his business model of “no waste”, a strategic objective of making someone else’s refuse the raw product for your production process.

Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses http://www.fergusonplarre.com.au where Ralph Plarre explained how he has designed the business with the environment in mind. Ralph was also the enthusiastic guest speaker at the dinner for the ALA’s on Thursday evening.

Some of the similarities defining success in SME’s while addressing the environment included:
• Strategic intent
• Focus
• Commercial imperative – though accepting that sometimes the environmental path is more expensive, it is profitable in the long run and benefits us all