The Asia Pacific region continues to rise as a global leader in growth and innovation, making it an essential time to review key trends and strategies for success.  In this video, Sam Dinte, Vice Chair for Australia and Asia Pacific, explores key business trends shaping the region—from the shift in manufacturing hubs to the rise of high-value industries and emerging markets like Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand. He also discusses how these shifts are influencing global talent strategy and the importance of governance, specialization and empowerment in building resilient, future-ready executive search firms.

Watch the full video to learn how we’re supporting clients across borders—and why now is the time to invest in this high-growth region.

Interview Transcript:

1. Which key trends are driving talent demand in Asia Pacific?

The Asia Pacific region continues to maintain global prominence when it comes to economic growth. Most economists forecast that two thirds of all global growth is going to come from the Asia Pacific region over the next decade.  And what we’re starting to see is a major shift from being a low-cost manufacturing center of excellence to higher value-added systems, offerings, companies and technologies.

Another very interesting effect that has come from Covid has been the essentially Chinese mitigation strategies in which global companies that are used to producing in China have started to reduce risk and look at other come countries in the region in which they can shift their manufacturing footprints. This is most directly impacting Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, which is the sleeping giant that we’re starting to see awaken.

The relationship between Japan and South Korea is warming up to levels we haven’t seen in quite some time, and Australia and New Zealand continue to follow suit with the United States and the United Kingdom.

2. Can you share a case study of a cross-border search assignment?

As the newly elected Vice Chair of Asia Pacific for IIC Partners I’d be remiss to not talk about a successful cross-border search that we’ve executed. We have a very recent example where we were working with a extremely high technology company based in Australia that is at the forefront of a number of both commercial innovations but more importantly, defense innovations. The investors and founders of the company believe that the majority of growth for this company is going to come from outside of their home country of Australia.

So we executed a search for the President of Global Defense and it is the only C-Suite member that they opted to place outside of Australia. We found this person in the United States, appointed them in the United States, and they were an excellent fit for our client because they had deep customer relationships, deep technology understanding, and could really help them move up the value chain and move into some critical programs that they were trying to tackle.

3. What is your top advice for running a successful search firm?

There are a number of suggestions that we would propose to independent executive search firm owners, boutique firms, vertically focused firms in the Asia Pacific region. We in the United States, we tend to run our firm with a high degree of process and governance to ensure that we’re constantly scrutinizing ourselves, focusing on operational excellence, and basically laying the groundwork to help our company smoothly scale and grow.

Another major element that we have really implemented inside our business is specialization. We have noticed throughout the executive search world a greater drive towards market specialization, becoming a thought leader and an expert in a certain market vertical or a functional vertical will always get you a seat inside your client’s boardroom.

And the final piece is empowerment. Ultimately, we believe that as we build out our teams, we need to delegate, empower and enable people to not only help carry the burden of work inside our business but also allow our employees to feel like they have a career journey with us
and that they have a future inside the business.

The last final tidbit I would add is embrace the remote chaos. I know that’s controversial, I know that differs from region to region, but there are so many productivity gains that can be leveraged if we’re just using technology. That doesn’t mean everybody needs to go work from the beach but that means being flexible, being creative with how we work and using technology to enhance our overall growth and success.

4. How does your firm benefit from being an IIC Partners member?

When we think about the benefits that we get from being a 20+ year member of IC Partners, there is an external benefit, there is an internal benefit. From an external perspective, we have the boots on the ground in every major market around the world to support our clients
with all of their critical needs.

From an internal benefit, we have a brilliant competition free zone to essentially exchange ideas, collaborate with partners from around the world, support each other and build lasting relationships.

5. As Vice Chair on the IIC Partners Board, what are your top priorities?

As a dual Australian-American citizen I’ve had the privilege to live, work and travel extensively throughout the Asia Pacific region. As I think about our goals as an organization and my goals as the new Vice Chair of Asia Pacific for IIC it’s to map the economic growth with more high caliber member firms in critical markets that can support our clients as they seek to target this growth.

The next 12 to 18 months for us are going to be focused on bringing in new members, engaging in thought leadership, collaboration and cross border work with future partners and existing partners in the Asia Pacific region.