Title: Submission of Reasoned Suggestions to
How
to get more than six seconds: Why did it take three hundred years and an
Icelandic entrepreneur for Nova Scotian stockfish heads and tails to find an
export market in Africa?
PREFACE
This letter to your committee receives a preface; Dr. Ray
Ivany, you made a pledge to call all Acadia Alumni upon arriving at your
current post. I am still waiting for your call, my telephone number is
1-902-681-0504.
BACKGROUNDER
Now allow me to give a
backgrounder: Bred on English language by the Acadia University Department of
English Literature and Theatre my BA was gained with three years of science
studies while working as an international shipping lobster packer, grader and
cook at Hall’s Harbour Lobster Pound. I worked my way across Canada and ended
up spending the last fifteen years teaching and studying abroad in Korea and
The United Arab Emirates, gaining a Master’s of International Business from The
University of Wollongong in Dubai and Australia in the top 5% of my class and
holding a letter of recommendation for doctoral studies from the Dean.
UOW Sydney Business
School has gained fourteen positions of quality to third ranked business school
in Australia over the past eight years since I graduated. The program has
doubled in size, price and duration and it was the first MIB graduate program
in the nation.
Where are the comparable improvements in quality and ranking
of Nova Scotia Business Schools?
A most recently
completed eGSA Graduate Certificate in Research Commercialisation with
Queensland University of Technology comes from the Australia Technology Network
(ATN). eGSA provides preferred research management training for The Australian
Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), The Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Cooperative
Research Centres (CRCs) around Australia. QUT is the first institution in the
world to offer a Master’s in Research Management.
Where is such training available in Canada?
My travel and research
experiences have taken me to: South
Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, India,
Sri Lanka, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Morocco,
Italy, Spain, France, The Netherlands, The United States, Australia and Canada.
There are those who
travel to expand the mind; there are those who visit as many places as
possible. Personally I like about a week at a time in a new city. Since
completing my most recent teaching position for a record breaking six years and
besides off-ramping here since March 2012, I found the time to visit a new
place every week from July to December across the Southern US States, Morocco
for two months and Southern and Central Spain for a month.
A year off-ramped in
Nova Scotia; a dozen applications to relevant teaching positions at Nova ScotiaCommunity College and a half a dozen export trade positions at NSBI without a
single call back getting a real sense of what newcomers here face.
The English major in me reads most
texts cover to cover, the international business teacher adds new knowledge and
method based on what appears to be working elsewhere and compiles long
bibliographical references in the case studies I have researched. At the
moment, I am on a 24 hour deadline for submitting a panel position proposal for
the first time to the Academy of International Business on the topic of
comparative investment strategies in China and India for the 2013 Conference in
Istanbul; a city I am familiar with and would enjoy returning to visit. It is
the first time they have asked me to and as an itinerant and contract teacher
abroad looking for work there is nothing better than a conference. So please
accept that my global to local suggestions are un-referenced however in due time
accessible if need be.
SUGGESTION
ONE: LOOK AT THE WORLD
It is my opinion that rural Nova
Scotia is running out of good ideas as well as people. So my first suggestion
is to start looking at other well developed nations that are facing similar
challenges all at the same time. Particularly good research is coming out of Terry
Mughan’s Department at Anglia Ruskin University and The
East of England Development Agency on the topic of business
incentives to repopulating rural or economic wastelands with small scale
superstores to replace bankrupt groceries in food desert environments. When the
researchers present the business case to, for example, Tesco, that square
footage profit returns are nearly identical in well placed heritage districts,
decaying communities get walking distance food sources that haven’t existed in
many locations for fifty years.
His results based applied research
is just a taste of what is out there.
REBUILD
THE CORES OF RURAL COMMUNITY à la TRIPLE HELIX
Nova Scotia is full of rural
communities that have seen most of their essential services close, reducing
their attractiveness to newcomers. The triple
helix model of higher education institutions, government and
local businesses designing regional partnerships is off and running in many
nations compared to Nova Scotia. The scales of these partnerships are
determined through rate of return business cases.
A character like Ifor Ffowcs-Williams comes to
mind as a Canadian triple helix model and cellular team building across
disciplines expert who could probably assist you in internationalizing and
globalizing your rural development programs. I think you need more knowledge
based exchanges with Nova Scotian based experts taking work terms in other
regions of the developed world to assist in developing strategies that are
really working elsewhere and repatriate good ideas from abroad.
NOT
MISSIONS ABROAD BUT EXCHANGE POSTS ABROAD
These are the kinds of learning
and knowledge exchanges that the Japanese conducted after WW II to rebuild a
shattered economy. They are also documented in several quality framework
improvements in government and community services undertaken in places like New
Zealand around the same time as the Japanese. As for Nova Scotians, there are
some culturally inherent skills that we do better than anywhere else in the
world so an accountable checklist of world leading advantages to the way Nova
Scotians tackle certain challenges better than anywhere else in the world needs
to be made. Exchange is always about sharing as much as is received.
Unfortunately, Nova Scotia shares much of Canada’s cultural and global
knowledge complacency. Less than 2% of all higher education students have
international work or study experiences in Canada.
So why not double the number of business,
education, and government leaders concerned with this issue committed to taking
international exchanges over the next ten years? Should not these Nova Scotians
take the time to go abroad and learn of new ways to handle similar local
challenges and should not their commitment to do so be as incentives to their
own promotions and advancement? Such quality knowledge gathering strategies
have worked all over the world and improved the quality of lives of workers,
students, governments and societies for millennia.
SUGGESTION
TWO: NEW TAX BENEFIT INCENTIVES
Nobody needs to tell you, you know
already, your business and personal taxes are the most horrendous in the nation
surely advertising, “Don’t come here.” So this suggestion is multifaceted.
Observe New Brunswick’s historical and seemingly better track record of
attracting new businesses that exactly remain beyond incentives. They are
certainly doing something differently to make that happen, and while I don’t
know what that is, there is a very near example of where comparative learning
and application could be taking place. However considering your rates of return
on recent millions provided to either profitable or non-profitable enterprises
as of late, there is a better example. Take a look at the foreign direct
investment policies for example in Sri Lanka or Thailand.
While Sri Lanka is making do with
low skilled industries with low wages and benefits, there is the distinct
possibility that free trade zones in Nova Scotia employing potential immigrants
or foreign workers as low skilled labourers would actually work. Especially if
unionized port environment construction and maintenance teams were employed.
The cost to deliver to markets might make up the difference. As the new
regional development authorities are being formed, they should encompass free
trade zones for particular industries on a similar design framework as a
country like Thailand where Bangkok does not beggar its rural regions, in fact
the farther you get from the capital the better the incentives are. As the US
import and export economy as set to double in scale and logistical capacities
by the year 2025, it makes sense to look at the hinterland port schemes
employed in parts of China and Singapore. Western
Europe has also managed to set up a few as well.
HINTERLAND
DEVELOPMENT
Factories and port facilities are
often indistinguishable in Asia to avoid costly delivery and logistics delays
due to poor transport infrastructure. In my opinion, many of Nova Scotia’s
underutilized ports should be free trade zones where they could even promote
sweatshop free practices. These are creative suggestions that are working in
many international ports and rural incentive programs around the world. The
only difference there would be between having labourers assemble your many
common household and consumer products in South East Asia and Canada is a few
thousand kilometres and ever increasing energy constraints. There are probably
dozens of Asian manufacturers as well as Mexican based maquiladoras who might
lose out if a similar ready to occupy infrastructure were prepared for
relocations.
Excellent examples of heritage
port facilities which could and should be renovated into free trade small
business zones exist all over Nova Scotia.
I am thinking of companies like
Allen’s or Canada Packer’s, Maple Leaf Foods, or Larsen’s, the list goes on,
what research into new foreign markets and product adaptations to meet ever
shifting demands was going on in these decades old companies? What local
universities were assisting them by sending student teams out into net food importing
nations such as those in North East Asia to find out what their tastes might
be? To give two unrelated examples, I choose Korean ones.
Not everyone eats wieners and
beans.
Did you know that Korean jewellery
manufacturers dominate the supply of the Dubai Gold Souk and they learned how
to do so by sending market researchers out there consulting with wholesalers
and delivering a quality product and that that domination of the market did not
take place in decades but in years? Or that Samsung cellphones for example, do
not dominate based upon price or quality but upon the short and dizzying three
month life cycles of their phones or that they test release dozens of new
products in their home Korean market because, for most global companies in the
world, Korea is one of the best test market guinea pigs?
TEAM
GRADUATE STUDENTS IN MARKETING WITH REAL BUSINESS CASES
I often wonder if some of the
local businesses above could have been saved in selective three and five year
international market penetration plans with tailored products to offer those
consumers not here at home but in emerging markets abroad which have the most
growth.
They aren’t in Europe or Boston,
they are in Africa where the Chinese are making billions, they are in Tamil
Nadu where the Japanese and Koreans are making billions; new markets are
growing, that’s where Nova Scotian products need to be sold. I remember walking
into a five story warehouse of Italian household furniture in Busan, Korea a
few years ago and thinking to myself, “not one of these chairs looks as good as
a Bass River Chair.” And when I contacted Bass River Chairs and suggested they
might find a good market there for their products, their manager told me they
don’t do exports. And now Bass River Chairs no longer exists.
INCENTIVIZE
SME EXPORT TRADE DEVELOPMENT PRONTO
The takeaway is any product based
company in Nova Scotia that has existed for more than five years should be
given a tax incentive to hire a dedicated export manager and eventually five
years later, two more to form a full export department without excuses. Especially in traditional and culturally
intangible industries like even quilting or knitting or the carding of wool,
the makers of goat’s cheese, the brewers of fair trade coffee; in Korea there’s
a guy who salts smoked mackerel by hand and he is more famous there than
Colonel Saunders.
SUGGESTION FOUR: INCENTIVIZE THE FOREIGN STUDENT WELCOME, THEIR PARENTS, FAMILIES AND FRIENDS WILL COME
How many of Nova Scotia’s
universities are presenting international students with internet welcome pages
in their own native languages? How many of them are coordinating with The
Department of Tourism to design similar local language information and booking
services for visits to Nova Scotia? How many of the international students in
school boards across the province are coordinating with The Department of
Tourism to welcome student’s families to this beautiful province?
And when you say that the school
boards and universities of this province are not responsible for improving
economic and employment opportunities here and engaging the international
markets of the world with the same dedication those Team Canada hockey players
put into the game, the purpose of education is put into doubt.
And again, how many Nova Scotian
school boards are studying the non-profit agencies in Northern British Columbia
to ensure that little two room schoolhouses like those in the Wentworth Valley
get to stay open because they’re not only still serving rural and small
community schools but fully financing their operating costs through their
international student draws? Finally, how many Nova Scotian universities are
operating offshore campuses or franchise operations to ensure their market is
being adequately presented abroad?
There are multiple solutions to
keeping schools in rural Nova Scotia. Why aren’t the national and international
best practices available to be implemented not being made? The tourist draw of
international students in their home nations, are they being pursued?
It is not my intention to
overwhelm your committee with my suggestions. However it is my opinion, that if
Nova Scotians had all of the answers and the examples of what works here in
their midst, then you would not be asking for opinions from the general public
and the state of affairs would be rosier and brighter than they are.
In Nova Scotia and perhaps Canada
and the western world, the suggestion box is almost always nearly empty when
compared with those in places like Japan. Our quality of life depends on trying
out new ideas that make sense. But without a culture that rewards and applies
new ideas to improve the quality of life of its citizens, many of the best and
brightest lighthouse keepers, where pure research and one person’s one idea
begins, will always remain on foreign shores.
Good ideas make sense at any time.
It’s my pleasure to share mine with you, so don’t be devaluing the training and
experience it took to submit them to you however free. Imagine what the result
could be? Perhaps six seconds turns into six minutes?
Sincerely,
Daniel
J. Costello
Daniel J. Costello, BA (Acadia)
MIB (UOW)
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