How Collaborating Pays Off in the Global Marketplace

At a trade summit recently organized by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, there was talk about the challenges for small and medium-sized companies entering growing and complex markets.

In addition, Cubex shares its story about how it collaborated with a key competitor, to fill a product void and to reach a global audience.

It's all here:  Going global all about strategy, timing

The Rest of the World Awaits the iPhone 4S

Effective November 11th, Apple will be offering its iPhone 4S (pictured) to:

Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania and South Korea.

Seventy (70) countries are expected to be selling the iPhone 4S before the close of 2011.

Read the entire article here.

New Open World of Science Goes Global

The Institute For the Future research affiliate -- founder of spacehack.org and open science strategist Ariel Waldman -- announced at her morning keynote at OSCON (the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland) that Science Hack Day is going global.

About Ariel Waldman (pictured):

Ariel is an open science strategist, interaction designer and the founder of Spacehack.org, a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. She currently works at Institute For The Future, a non-profit founded by early internet pioneers and ARPANET researchers. Recently, she founded Science Hack Day SF, an event that brings together scientists, technologists, designers and people with good ideas to see what they can create in a weekend.

Additionally, she sits on the advisory board for the SETI Institute's science radio show Are We Alone?, is a contributor to the book State of the eUnion: Government 2.0 and Onwards, and is the founder of CupcakeCamp. In 2008, she was named one of the top 50 most influential individuals in Silicon Valley. Previously, she was a CoLab Program Coordinator at NASA, a Digital Anthropologist at VML (a WPP agency), and a sci-fi movie gadget columnist for Engadget.

Learn more: Science Hack Day Goes Global

Photo credit: Ariel Waldman Google+

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Are Your Processes In Place For Going Global?

As your organization grows global, do you have a support system in place that can take you where you want to go with total transparency and minimal operational, supply chain and distribution missteps? We hope so.

What the management needs is a global view of its inventory and operations, as well as tight coordination between manufacturing and distribution operations to ensure an efficient supply chain. In addition, they want a consolidated view into the company’s financial data so that they have clear visibility into their costs and margins. This ensures that the organization is able to monitor its financial and operational model closely as it prepares to take on the significant new risks of going global.

If you have doubts, read:

Is Your Company Ready to Take Advantage of Market Growth?
Manufacturing Business Technology
by Thomas Tan

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

How Retailers Can Find Riches Overseas

A new report, “The Global E-Commerce Gold Rush:  How Retailers Can Find Riches Overseas,” by Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) sizes up the challenges, opportunities and best practices for retailers who want to take advantage of e-commerce growth -- estimated to reach nearly $1.4 trillion in 2015 -- by going global.

Learn more here.

To read the report go to cisco.com/web/about/ac79/globalecom

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Quote of the Week: Donald Murray

 

"We currently see more upside in China from new emerging companies that are going global." ~ Resources Global CEO Donald Murray

See how Resources Global (RG), a unit of Irvine, California-based Resources Connection Inc. (Hoover's listing here), assigns its 3,000 full-time consultants spanning across four continents to work on clients' projects.

Resources Global Eyes Chinese Firms Going Global

RG competes with Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst and Young and Accenture.  Too bad there is no global small business practice.

Posted by:  The Global Small Business Blog

Biggest Barriers to Global Communications: Culture and Language

According to a study commissioned by the Public Relations Global Network, one of the top international networks of independent public relations agencies, organization surveyed indicated that the biggest barriers to global communication were culture and language, each cited by more than 40 percent of respondents.

That and one other interesting finding:

... even organizations that are not operating globally today said that they expect to have a global marketing communications function in the future,” said Francine Robbens, PRGN president and partner at Brussels-based PRP-Public Relations Partners.  “Communications professionals see clear benefits in fostering global relationships.” 

Read the entire news piece:  Marketing Executives Going Global:  Survey

How to Take Your Business to the Next Level By Going Global

How to Keep Up With the Global Crowd

How not to slip up with it comes to using technology to go global.

Read:

Avoiding I.T. Slip-Ups When Going Global
David H. Freedman || NYTimes.com

According to the article, key areas to focus on if you are to keep up with the global crowd:

• Too little or too much customization
• Tricky support demands
• Logistics
• Privacy

Increase Your Sales Around the World

In this case, it all started with a mention on knitting blogs about Alexis Winslow's website that has increased sales for her around the world.

Learn more:

Designer with local roots going global

Painting illustration:  Alexis Winslow

What's Nato's New Role?

A little late on this but still worth a look:

Nato's new strategic concept unveiled in Lisbon underlines the global role of the alliance's new non-continental or non-geographic preoccupations such as cyber and space.

Watch a video and learn more here.

Illustration clip here.

The Kardashian Brand is Borderless

Never in a million years could I ever imagine writing about Kim Kardashian (pictured) and her sister Kourtney going global; but here I am.

Kim Kardashian and sister Kourtney Kardashian are going global with cover spreads in far flung India and South Africa.  It’s a far cry from Wilshire Blvd. but the Kardashian brand apparently knows no bounds, even in the Third World.

What can we learn from them?  That anything is possible when it comes to taking a brand global.

Read more here.

Photo credit: GlobalGrind, The World According to Hip-Hop

How to Find An International Job or Internship Anywhere in the World

It starts with Going Global.

Going Global is the leading provider of country specific career and employment resources for individuals interested in working outside of their home country. More than 500 universities around the world currently subscribe to Going Global for use by their students, staff and alumni. We provide Country Career Guides, USA City Career Guides, corporate profiles for the world's leading employers and a job search database with over 500,000 worldwide job and internship listings.

Going Global blog.  Going Global Facebook.  Going Global Twitter.

Illustration credit here.

Posted by:  Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog

Medellin, Columbia Goes Global

Medellin, Columbia