From far away, a friendly light, a safe haven and place to hang your dry hat.

Hope your weekend shines bright.

Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog

Lighthouse directory

More info on the lighthouse shown above.

According to Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, "hardly."

There are still vast new business frontiers left unexplored.

-- thank goodness!

Here are 14 questions that Jim addresses with interviewer Jennifer Robison of GALLUP Management Journal® (GMJ) on the future of corporate leadership.

GMJ: Before you talk about the next generation of leadership, what was the last generation of leadership?

GMJ: How is the business jungle more dangerous? And what should the next generation of leaders know?

GMJ: What do you mean by "states of mind"?

GMJ: Explain what you mean by "mathematically describing states of mind."

GMJ: So why will leaders who can quantify states of mind be the winners in this new world?

GMJ: What's the value of mathematically describing states of mind?

GMJ: Do you need direct access to people to affect states of mind?

GMJ: That's the political angle. What's the business value of quantifying states of mind?

GMJ: Such as workers and customers?

GMJ: Quantifying your customers' states of mind seems difficult and expensive. Isn't it cheaper and easier just to create their state of mind through marketing?

GMJ: That's a lot of complicated things for businesses -- or governments, for that matter -- to measure.

GMJ: When does policy succeed?

GMJ: How, ultimately, will behavioral economics data benefit leaders?

GMJ: Well, yes. What's the meaning of life?

Read -- but get yourself in the right "state of mind" before doing so -- the fascinating discussion here. And while we are on Gallup, you might also explore the Gallup World Poll.

If you run a global small business, and I am assuming many of you do, what should you be doing to swing open that door to China? The first step is to track what others are doing and determine success rates.

For example, innovative healthcare product company Novartis announced on Tuesday that it will spend U.S. $1 billion spread over five years to make China (starting in Shanghai -- pictured) a third global pillar for its research and development. Why? Couple of good reasons:

1. Rapid growth is one key reason for the expansion.
2. Projected to become one of Novartis's three biggest markets by 2014.
3. Revenue in China has been growing at annual rate of 30% in the last few years.
4. Health-care reform alone will fuel growth.

The question Novartis asks is: "Where do you need to be down the road, and clearly it is here." It's a question many of us should be asking and facing but what small business can afford to make the kind of investment required to do business in China?

Do you think at the very least it might be prudent to give Novartis a call or send an email to an appropriate person to see how you might partner with them on some of their initiatives? It's a great way to attempt to crack open the market -- together.

Read more here.

The Impact of Emerging Markets

Now Playing

Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg (pictured) on the challenges companies face when operating in emerging markets.

Challenge No. 1: How to fuel growth.

To find out about the growth and trends in blogosphere, catch the State of the Blogosphere 2009 report released, starting October 19th, in five consecutive daily segments.

Here's a snippet of Day 1:

Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group. Nearly half of all bloggers we surveyed have earned a graduate degree, and the majority have a household income of $75,000 per year or higher. As blogging is now firmly a part of the mainstream, we see that the average blogger has three or more blogs and has been blogging for two or more years. We are also noticing an ever-increasing overlap between blogging and mainstream media.

So who are the bloggers? Let's delve into the demographics:

• Two-thirds are male
• 60% are 18-44
• The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population
◦ 75% have college degrees
◦ 40% have graduate degrees
◦ One in three has an annual household income of $75K+
◦ One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
◦ Professional and self-employed bloggers are more affluent: nearly half have an annual household income of $75,000 and one third topped the $100,000 level
• More than half are married
• More than half are parents
• Half are employed full time, however ¾ of professional bloggers are employed full time.

Jump to Day 5, Global Impact of all (including the use of Twitter) here.

A hat tip to cool colleague Dan Webber, Account Supervisor, Edelman (D.C.) for bringing this to my attention.

Go here for additional data.

Here's the task at hand for 46-year-old chief executive N. Chandrasekaran (better known as "Chandra" -- pictured) at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.: To chart a course for India's largest software exporter out of a recession that deflated global technology spending and exposed the reliance of Indian outsourcing firms on the U.S. and U.K. markets.

In an interview conducted by WSJ reporters Amol Sharma and Paul Beckett, Chandra shares his mind about how he plans to navigate Tata out of the downturn.

Let's focus primarily on the 21 takeaways that I picked up on that might enable you to get a better hold on global strategy for your business:

1. Expand your company's footprint (think about emerging markets).
2. Tackle new areas (such as cloud computing).
3. Make sure you are very close with all your customers.
4. Manage your costs better.
5. It's not about taking costs out; it's about bringing more efficiency.
6. Become closer to your customers.
7. Stay with your customers during the downturn (don't abandon them).
8. Coach your team to have them understand your customer's "pain points."
9. Ask your customers: "What can we do to help?"
10. Don't continue to pursue BIG deals in the pipeline that may never come to fruition.
11. Focus on deals (develop an entirely new strategy) that will come to fruition.
12. Expand your presence in other parts of the world (consider emerging markets).
13. Develop a full suite of services that you can sell end-to-end offerings to customers.
14. Go after "nonlinear" growth. In other words, find ways to generate more revenues with less headcount additions.
15. Create something once, then re-use it to serve multiple customers!
16. As your customers go global, be there before they arrive to service their needs.
17. Send people on-site to make it work -- especially if language is a problem.
18. Select strategic locations to conduct business in.
19. Pick the right strategic location and then scale it (e.g, Mexico).
20. Train people to develop your firm's methodology across all continents.
21. Look at cloud computing as a business model, not a technology.

Tata Consultancy to Expand Footprint in Emerging Markets

This is a fascinating commentary not just about the wildly popular "Mad Men" series but more about Conrad Hilton (pictured), founder of the Hilton Worldwide hotel chain. There's so much I didn't know about him.

In the series, Hilton, portrayed by Chelcie Ross, says, "It's my purpose in the life to bring America to the world." In real life he called it, "planting a little bit of America around the world."

I'll let you read the piece for yourself, "Hollywood Discovers a Real Businessman."

The only reason why I am blogging about it is because I feel a little of The Global Small Business Blog brings America to the world too. Don't you?