Position: General Manager, Field: Nanotechnology, nanomaterials, Organisation: Revolution Fibres.
Job
Albert describes his General Manager role in Revolution Fibres as having two sides. The first being “to really work with the smarts in the background of the company and to bring them together, to be able to drive them as a team, work with them, make sure they understand what our objectives are and really get the most out of them”. The other side is when he needs to turn that round and take that to the market, to people and to customers and be able to communicate that to them. He describes this as “being the face that sells their service to people and helps people understand the advantages nanofibre can bring”.
He finds that, in a high-tech start-up, the General Manager role is one that has a real focus on working with the company and helping it to evolve into the kind of organisation it needs to be.
Coming from New Zealand, I'm used to the Kiwi way of doing more with less. And that's quite a good thing – it can take you quite a long way – but really, to produce excellent things, it takes more than just a number 8 wire approach. We need to step up and invest in innovation.
Career pathway
Albert is an engineer who began his career in the family business, a textile company. Starting on the ground floor and working his way up, he developed skills and expertise that led him into a business development role. He travelled frequently to international destinations in this role and learnt a lot about business.
After a while, he decided to take a step back to review his career and where he wanted to go. He decided to do an MBA. Towards the end of his MBA, he spotted an advertisement for Revolution Fibre’s CEO role. Deciding that this would be a really exciting thing to be part of, he applied and was successful.
Albert joined Revolution Fibres when the company had its foundational technology, its first product and first customer. At this time, it was focused on making nanofibre products. With Albert’s leadership, the company realised its strengths were in the science and manufacturing of nanofibre and refined its business model. Now Revolution Fibres’ business model is to work with partners in a wide range of industries to develop innovative solutions and products using nanofibre technology.
Albert has been Revolution Fibre’s General Manager for nearly 3 years.
This article is based on information current in 2013.
