OWNERS of family-owned businesses should consider making them public corporations in order to avoid failure and enhance their chances of becoming major players in a globalised economy, says Grace, Kennedy & Company Limited executive, James Moss-Solomon.

The company’s chief corporate affairs officer was speaking at last Friday’s policy forum at the Management Institute for National Development (MIND), at Old Hope Road in Kingston. The theme of his address was “Transforming the Mindset of the Private Sector to face Globalisation”.

Moss-Solomon maintained that many large local companies were family-owned, and therefore susceptible to what he described as generational failure.

“Second and third generations usually ‘mash up’ a family-owned company that has been going quite well,” he contended.

The Grace Kennedy executive noted that one of the characteristics of developed nations was that they had many public corporations, which were basic tools of international trade.

Reinforcing his point, Moss-Solomon pointed out that corporations allowed for sustainable development or longevity, and could be used as an opportunity to infuse professional management within the organisation.

Refusal to improve the company in this way, he said, was the mindset of a man “who would rather be the owner of a gas station in Mocho, than be a 10 per cent shareholder in General Motors”.

“We need to know that that is not going to get us very far in the global environment,” he said.

Moss-Solomon also urged Jamaicans and other Caribbean nationals to change their suspicious attitude towards each other.

“It is not that when RBTT comes here, Trinidad is buying out Jamaica,” he said. “And when Grace, Kennedy goes to Trinidad, I don’t like to hear (that) Jamaicans are buying out Trinidad. I believe that we are above that.”

Investment from outside of the region, he said, was often seen as positive; while regional investors were paid scant regard.

“Why am I seen as an alien, but British Petroleum comes and (it is) big national news, investment. But when another Caribbean nation comes… (the reaction is:) we don’t want any more Guyanese buying any more land in Antigua… Why do we look at it like that?” he asked.

Moss-Solomon noted that Caribbean people were raised on a diet of hatred for one another, and it is now time for this to change as the region must work together as a team, to realise economic progress.

He encouraged participants to begin to think not only of remittances from abroad, but also of locals making investments overseas.

Turning to the issue of industrialisation and intellectual property, Moss-Solomon declared that Jamaica should not look at becoming industrialised, but rather at the earning opportunities to be seized in the creation of intellectual property.

“We need radical thinking, because there is not a hope that Jamaica is going to enter the industrial world,” he asserted. “We don’t have the capacity, and even if we had the capacity, the role of an industrial world has changed. Fifty years ago, 100 years ago, a man with a factory used to take the larger part of the profit share. Nowadays, Nike doesn’t own a factory, and Nike makes more (money) than the people with the factory. Let’s learn something from that.”

He called upon members of the audience to take bold initiatives as intellectual power, he claimed, is what runs the world.

The key, the executive said, was to consider what is appropriate for Jamaica, and to embellish that by teaming up with other colleagues in the Caribbean.