America's Future Depends In Part on Globalization

That's according to: America Needs a Makeover

“America's future—and the future of the world beyond America—depends on how well we deal with” four issues, they argue ... globalization ...

Read more here.  And Thomas Friedman is quoted.

Illustration credit, Amazon.com:  That Used to Be Us:  How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Where Will You Be in 2020?

Need help mapping it out?  Start here:

Intuit 2020 Report
Twenty Trends That Will Shape the Next Decade

Our friends and colleagues over at Small Biz Labs/Emergent Research and Intuit (press release here) have done an amazing job producing a document that will serve as guide for our future.

This is a must read for anyone who wants to stay ahead of the pack on all things related to global economic growth and the power of the Internet.

Excerpt:

10.  Industrializing Countries Emerge as the New Engine for Global Growth.

Imagine a world where businesses big and small cater to a new middle class who lives outside of their traditional markets.

In the coming 10 years, consumer spending will increase in the developed world, but not to prerecession growth rates.  Aging population, depleted savings and a debt hangover will restrain spending rates for these countries.  However, the developing world will experience significant economic growth with more than 1 billion new middle class consumers fueling global consumer spending.  Successful businesses will adjust their products and services to meet the needs of these new middle class consumers.

Access report here.  A PDF file of the report is available at www.intuit.com/2020.

Posted by:  Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog

A Sense of Globalization Is Very Important

Foreign Policy Contributing Editor Christina Larson talks with Google Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt (pictured) about what makes a city smart, how not to lose $1 trillion -- and the one place he's never been. Very interesting read.

Excerpt:

How is information technology changing the world?

When I was growing up, an elite controlled the media. And the majority of the world was very, very poor, both in a resource sense and an information sense. Since then, a set of things have occurred: the digital revolution, the mobile revolution, and so forth -- of which I am enormously proud because they are roughly the equivalent of lifting people from abject poverty and ignorance to a reasonable ability to communicate and participate in the conversation.

Information empowers individuals. And it has a huge and overwhelmingly positive impact on society. Think of someone who can now get information about finance or technology, or they're in school and they can't afford textbooks but access information online. Or imagine medicine -- I mean there's just issue after issue.

Globalization has clearly been responsible for lifting at least 2 billion people from abject poverty to extremely low levels of middle class. As a result, they have greater access to education and opportunity; they are much less likely to attack you, and they're busy trying to fulfill their low-cost version of the American Dream. They're trying to buy a car.

Read the entire interview: "Googlopolis"

Caricature drawing credit above of Eric Schmidt can be found here.

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog