Adrian Gore – lifetime achiever at 54

JORDAN MOSHE

He joins the ranks of recipients which include Johann Rupert, Christo Wiese, Brian Joffe, Nelson Mandela, Allan Gray, Stephen Koseff, and several others.

“I really believe that my success is because of the country, not despite it,” Gore said this week. “That is very important. A lot of people are in a negative narrative all the time, and think they would be great, and [could] do it anywhere. I could not have.”

Held at the Empire Conference and Events Venue in Parktown on 8 November, the black-tie gala dinner celebrates the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies that have delivered the highest returns to their shareholders over the past five years. In 2010, Gore received the Sunday Times Top 100 Companies Business Leader of the Year Award.

Gore founded Discovery in 1992 with a simple vision: to enable people to live healthier lives, and have incentives to do so. “We aspire to be a force for social good, and have a desire to make a meaningful impact on society. We are here to change the world, not just tag along,” Gore said in 2013.

Speaking to the Times of Israel in 2013, Gore said that his focus had always been on solving problems in a real, economically viable way, and this is what underpinned Discovery’s innovation. “We have to be a force for good, genuinely, from an ideological perspective,” he said. “Corporate social responsibility dollars are not enough. It’s really about society-building in an institutional and financial form.”

According to Gore, opportunities for investment and economic growth can be found in South Africa, but only if we look past our inherent negativity.

Speaking recently at the Discovery Leadership Summit, he said South Africa’s GDP was 2.5 times bigger than it was at the beginning of democracy, and the country’s economy was almost as big as Austria’s and Switzerland’s.

“Give our country a chance‚” he said‚ making a case for optimism that is not naïve, but fact-based. He described South Africa as a place of opportunity and a huge market‚ which was why Discovery had grown into a global business.

Praising Gore for his achievement, Ron Derby, the Editor of Business Times, said, “In an age where everyone and their dog is talking about disruptors and their impact on established businesses, Gore is perhaps the most successful in that regard.”