The Personal Perspective:
Something that Olof mentioned was the same thing that my mother had many times quoted for me :” Life’s difficult problems are beyond those solutions incorporated in a book”.
Olf’s dad had passed away because their company had gone bankrupt and even though how hard and how many hours his father had invested in the company the sales were not improving. One wonder’s everyday in his life, at least some of us do is what if this happened to us what would we have done?
The true entrepreneur and leader realizes that he does not have all the qualities that are required by a huge corporation to succeed and that’s exactly what the Spendrup’s brother’s do they hired people who were more intelligent than them but most importantly the first step was to downsize.
Long story short, they were the ideal entrepreneur; no great money or market share. Their competitors had it all and they did not consider them as a threat especially after they had done the Swot analysis.
According to Olof, that was the greatest mistake committed by them...the Spendrup licensed the premium brand and then slowly established itself through bootstrapping, experimenting and taking risks.
There are two interesting things to note here: the moral standard and the price.
It’s not the strongest species that survive nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. Darwin
This is the well known strategy applied by many and is a motivation for us to adapt adapt and adapt if we are to survive. Spendrup did the same and though unethical modes of conduct, that is using other country’s bottle or label design for one’s own product…Spendrup explains that after such a long journey these ethical modes of conduct seems pretty small. He took the risks and many more in his personal life.
Every success comes with a price and so did both the businesses. The Indonesian Bank had merged with a foreign company and the new corporate culture had destroyed the first one, leading to less productivity.
While in Olof’s case…it caused him two marriages and according to him his brother three. Successful businesses require a lot of time, energy and continuous input. The only problem is it’s not for s couple of years but can span to 10 years as in the case with my grandfather’s business.
In conclusion:
What I learned from the two seminars and my own experience with my grandfather’s business is that the corporate culture should continue to grow, family owned business has more benefits and the last tip that I found very useful by Olof was to follow the consumer wherever they go i.e to find a niche.