It's a long way for anyone to carry the baton from Sydney via Manchester to Liverpool but that could be the route travelled by a successful business initiative.

When Sydney hosted the spectacular Olympic Games in 2000 the business community of Australia's most populous city benefited by forming Business Club Australia. Seizing the impetus provide by the Olympics the Business Club was a web-based forum which brought business people together, enabled them to forge new relationships, and - in a style not unfamiliar to Olympians - offered the prospect of profit margins rising faster, higher, stronger.

So to Manchester and the memorable Commonwealth Games of 2002. Picking up on the Sydney experience, the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and other agencies set up the North West Business Club which is also a web-based initiative [www.nwbusinessclub.com]. While the Games were under way the club acquired a physical presence with a suite in the centre of Manchester where members could meet, talk, and prosper. The NW Business Club recently acquired funding from NWDA to secure its future to the end of 2005. The Games may have moved on but the business action continues.

The next big event is of course the Capital of Culture year in 2008. Similar opportunities will present themselves. Just like Manchester and Sydney, Liverpool will benefit from worldwide projection of its brand and an influx of visitors on a grand scale. Even more beneficial than the Games cities, Liverpool's Cultural programme will spread over a whole year instead of being concentrated into one fortnight.

It is still five years away but the questions need to be asked now: how can we, the business community, contribute to the Capital of Culture? And what strategy should be adopted to ensure that this once-in-a-lifetime moment is of significant and lasting benefit to business on Merseyside?

Already taking shape on Speke Boulevard is the Mersey Wave, at 30 metres high and 72 metres long the largest piece of public art ever to be commissioned in Liverpool. It's a symbol of confidence and expectation and it chimes neatly with the Capital of Culture award. But just as Sydney and Manchester proved that the Games were about more than sport, so Liverpool faces the challenge of showing that Culture is about more than works of art.

It's a topic that has already been discussed by the steering group of South Liverpool Business Leaders. Ideas are being tossed around and all suggestions are welcome.