How to learn about culture and language. When you live in a foreign culture, you learn how to learn. You learn what vocabulary is important, what language learning techniques work, how to make relationships, what skills are important, what details to pay attention to. These skills will carry over to other languages and other cultures in the future.Read the entire piece here: The Best Defense (be sure to read the wild comments)
Illustration credit here.There are 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide. Wouldn’t you like to add them as customers?
“We’re really wasting time,” says Janet Carmosky (pictured), CEO of the China Business Network. Carmosky knows what it’s like to be busy. When not running the China Business Network, a resource geared towards international professionals doing business with China; advising major corporations on their China strategies; or speaking at conferences, she writes about China for publications like the Economist and the Harvard Business Review.Learn more about what she has to say here:
The only legal requisites to opening an import business are having an importer of record number, which is usually just the business's tax-identification number, and a surety bond to protect the U.S. government if you can't pay your duties, taxes and other fees. Surety bonds are required for all so-called formal entries where the shipment is valued at more than $2,000, but many importers use them on smaller shipments as well. They can be purchased ...Read the entire answer: Opening a Small Import Business
"More and more of our exports have started going to the faster-growing regions in Asia, Latin America and Canada," said Morgan Stanley economist Ted Wieseman. "It highlights that the emerging markets never really had much of a slowdown at all. They've continued to outperform throughout the crisis."Read the entire article here.
Exports of industrial supplies were particularly strong, rising 8%, driven by chemicals and plastics. Food exports also surged. Among the big gains: Soybean exports jumped to almost $2.4 billion, an all-time high, from $1.8 billion in September.
Foreign CompetitionRead the entire article here.
Especially if you are creating a small business that does manufacturing, you are going to have to deal with foreign competition.
So are you going to be able to compete with the companies in your industry that pay their workers on the other side of the world less than a tenth of what you are paying to your American workers?
On the other side of the world, companies often don’t have to worry about unions, worker’s comp, health benefits, retirement benefits, nightmarish environmental regulations, crushing taxes or miles of paperwork and red tape.
Are you certain that you can compete against that?
“Often the best sales strategy is not going directly into new markets, but it’s leveraging up your existing customers. We are seeing this in a lot of manufacturing sectors, in a lot of technology companies. We [Canadians] have very, very good products, but often these products have to be packaged or integrated into a bigger service for customers.”Read the entire article here.
It’s a global economy. We know that. But what does that really mean? It means that even if you decide to start a business tomorrow in your hometown, more likely than not, you’re going to have to turn to other parts of the world to make your business efficient and profitable. For many business owners, that other part of the world will most likely be China.Read: The Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Doing Business in China
The kiosk, which is located at SME Corp's office in Menara Matrade, also helps them leverage on the toolkit to enhance their business by reducing their operational cost. SMEs can gain access to the relevant information in the toolkit via the Internet and need not go to the kiosk personally to access it.Learn more here.
The SME Toolkit is an online program that enables entrepreneurs and small businesses to learn how to implement sustainable business management practices needed for growth in areas such as finance, accounting, international business, marketing, human resources or legal, at no cost.
"Entrepreneurs are not born but created by their experience." ~ Patrick Molle, President of EMLYONHis conclusions and recommendations can be found here (requires translation).
