Dr Oren Harari, New York Times best selling author, struck a chord at a PMA breakfast session by telling his audience that produce and most other industries are holding themselves back by being "bolted to what has made it successful in the past".

He said: "We cannot proceed to the future by believing that what we have done in the past is good enough. All companies must make fundamental changes and if they don't someone else will. The key is to understand why you are making the changes before they are made.

"There is nothing more stupid than making something more efficient when it was irrelevant before anyway."

Harari said that companies get big by being great, not great by being big. "Being big is no longer a guarantee of success, which is why so many of the large mergers end up diminishing shareholder value. Two tired old bureaucracies will usually make one tired old bureaucarcy. It is logical - two dinosaurs mating do not produce a gazelle."

The leaders in all industry are not believers in conventional wisdom, he said, advocating lunacy as the way forward. He quoted US secretary of state Colin Powell, as saying: "You're a good leader when people follow you only out of curiosity."

Harari added: "The challenge is to anticipate what customers are going to want. Customrs are notoriously lacking in foresight, you need to provide the product, educate them and pull them along. if you wait for people to tell you what they want, you'll be too late."

Anyone who wants to read more of Harari's musings on global industry can visit www.harari.com

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