BP Rejects AAEA's Partnership Proposal

The Great Call of China Ends For Vodafone

Dashed hopes but loads of cash later -- Vodafone sells its stake in China Mobile for U.S. $6.6 billion.

Read more here. About Vodafone.

Graphic illustration (Vodafone's global footprint) source here.

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

How to Think BIG in the Global Marketplace

Interesting article over at The Porter Bay Group.

When you click on the link, it's an immediate PDF file download: Think BIG: Competing in the Global Market

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

An Opportunity to Grow Your Business Internationally

How can an entrepreneur or small business owner pass this up? British Airways (BA) offers U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners the critical tools for building business relationships abroad and stimulating growth Face-to-Face.

As part of the Face-to-Face campaign, BA will award 250 small businesses the opportunity to travel to London and beyond through the British Airways Face of Opportunity contest. Any entrepreneur or small business owner with a clear business need for international exposure should visit www.ba.com/facetoface for the opportunity to compete for and win a free flight.

British Airways strongly believes face-to-face interaction with global stakeholders is a critical tool to help entrepreneurs and small businesses build ongoing, mutually beneficial business relationships abroad, effectively supporting U.S. economic growth and global expansion and exports.

To learn more and apply, go here. Jump straight to contest here and good luck!

Graphic source here.

Posted by: The Global Small Business Blog

The Global Citizen Sector

Citizen sector is defined by Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka and Valeria Budinich, founder and chief entrepreneur of Ashoka’s Full Economic Citizenship Initiative, as:

... the term we use to define the millions of groups established and run by mission-minded individuals across the globe who are attempting to address critical social needs—has long been regarded as understaffed and inefficient. But that has changed. We work with some 3,000 social entrepreneurs worldwide, and over the past 30 years we’ve seen the citizen sector catch up with business as it has increased its productivity, size, and reach. Its organizations are attracting talented and creative leaders, and their work is changing the game in critical industries and areas such as energy and health care.

Read more about this at "A New Alliance for Global Change," but you cannot access the entire article without first subscribing or purchasing a single copy PDF over at Harvard Business Review. And once there, you might also pick up a copy of, "Can Entrepreneurs Save the World?"

Related piece here (blog post by Ashoka).

Photo credit here.

Director of AAEA Kenya Office Publishes New Book

"Peace Art: The Forbidden Expression"

Boaz Adhengo writes:

"My purpose of writing this book is to describe the complex ‘Peace Art’ as it occurs in Africa and specifically, Kenya. My understanding of Peace Art is not universally accepted. Some researchers’ prefer less expressive, more cognitive behavior models to describe this concept. More so, conflict and chaotic relation of art, a look into the opposite. It is more of a proposal into collective action, into resourceful organization of art into action. The approach into this writing is purely creative but informing, merging existing examples with experience into a digestible piece that will not warrant a meeting."

Purchase the Book via Amazon.com

AAEA Kenya

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