North East businesses must leave 'comfort zone'
Nov 21 2008 by Andrew Hebden, The Journal
ENTREPRENEURS must demonstrate more ambition, belief and courage if the North East is to fulfil its economic potential, the region’s business executive of the year said last night.
Dr Tony Trapp, managing director of the Northumberland-based IHC Engineering Business (EB), said the North East was too often held back by a lack of ambition.
“The North East is full of people who, if you could get them in the right environment, their capability could be overwhelming,” said Dr Trapp, who recently took the top honour at North East Business Executive of the Year Awards organised by The Journal and Evening Gazette.
“The challenge is how you get the mindset into people to do something that they believe in.”
Dr Trapp was addressing an audience drawn from the region’s business and political community at the start of his year-long post as David Goldman Visiting Professor of Business Innovation at Newcastle University Business School.
He succeeds Fiona Cruickshank who this week completed the sale of her company, Specials Laboratory, in a £20m deal.
Dr Trapp sold his own business to its new Dutch parent IHC for £30m deal earlier this year which saw 70 members of staff at the firm net pay-outs averaging £70,000 each.
In a wide-ranging speech, he called on people in the North East to get out of their comfort zone, take on more responsibility and risk, be inspired to exceed their own potential and reduce the region’s dependence on the public sector.
The former Newcastle University academic also said it was essential that universities did not dampen the entrepreneurial spirit of students, warning against the creation of “a normalised product”.
And he warned that the current economic downturn presented a major challenge to the North East’s burgeoning oil and gas sector, which had been hard hit by the sharp decline in the oil price.
The sector currently accounts for a significant majority of his firm’s work, although it is also active in the telecoms, defence and renewables industries.
Read more about Dr Trapp’s vision for the future of the North East in our Rising Stars and Future Leaders magazine, published with The Journal next Friday, November 28
