"Hey ho for Halloween
When the fairies all are seen;
Some black and some green,
Hey ho for Halloween!"

~ Traditional Irish Rhyme

Posted by Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog

You tell me:

1. Sony Reader (top photo)
2. Amazon Kindle
3. Barnes & Noble Nook
4. Samsung Papyrus (bottom photo)

And there are more here!

How do you determine which company is truly global on the launch of its e-book reader -- by wireless capabilities, number of people using the gadget or the number of different languages available on it or all of the above?

If an eleven-year old boy from Minnesota can come up with an idea and have it shipped worldwide, so can you. Learn in this case what the secret to global small business success is here.

And love this quote within it:

Even if some funding remains in question, Michael Howard of the U.S. Export-Import Bank had good news for businesses: "There is plenty of money out there." Federal loan guarantees are available for many export businesses.

Photo: Mattracks

The World Entrepreneurship Forum’s “Entrepreneur for the World” Award, Politician category, has been exceptionally granted during a conference held on October 20, 2009 hosted by EMLYON Business School (Lyon, France). And the winner is Mary Robinson!

From the press release:

Mrs Robinson's passion and faith left the audience capitivated and charmed. In her speech to more than 600 EMLYON students, Mrs Robinson highlighted that “The world needs leadership and especially leadership of values” saluting our School mission statement "educating entrepreneurs for the world" that gives sense to any action and project at EMLYON Business School.

Patrick Molle, President of EMLYON Business School, and Jean-Luc Decornoy, Chairman of KPMG SA, presented the Award to Ms. Robinson in the presence of the official partners of the World Entrepreneurship Forum (full disclosure: I am a member).

The broadcast of the conference will be on the World Entrepreneurship Forum’s website: (http://www.world-entrepreneurship-forum.com) as a video shortly.

The "Entrepreneur for the World" Awards are granted to emblematic international personalities, in recognition of their actions in favor of entrepreneurship and social justice.

There are four different award categories: Entrepreneur, Social Entrepreneur, Politician and Academic Expert. The names of the award-winners are being held secret until the Award Ceremony which will be held on November 19, 2009 during the 2009 World Entrepreneurship Forum (full disclosure: I am attending).

The "Entrepreneur for the World" Awards have been initiated during the 2008, and first edition of the World Entrepreneurship Forum, when all its members freely voted for each one of the four categories. The vote was secret. A biographical research has been conducted by the World Entrepreneurship Forum committee to ensure that nominated personalities are in line with the World Entrepreneurship Forum ethics and values of entrepreneurship, social justice and international exposure.

The final Jury was held in Lyon, on April 1st, 2009, composed of 15 personalities of 6 different nationalities.

More information about the World Entrepreneurship Forum can be found here. Guiding Principals which enable and foster the various forms of entrepreneurship can be found here.

As Steve Miller for IndustryWeek states in "Are You Cued in to Cultural Intelligence?:"

Understanding the culture of the parties you are negotiating with is vital in order to establish a successful business relationship.

Agree? Disagree?

With increasing globalization, cultural intelligence becomes ever more crucial to global business success. We covered this issue extensively eight years ago with, "Are You Ready? Take the Global IQ Test To Find Out (available for download here)" -- here's tip No. 3:

3). Are you adaptable, do you take risks, and can you be innovative?

Adaptability means that if you don’t know how different markets operate, you find out—fast. You stay sensitive to the cultural values of other countries. And if things appear one way today and another tomorrow, you shift gears and work with conditions as you find them. Creating your strategy on your feet is the only way to do global business.

The more you risk, the greater your chances for success or failure, but either way you’re pushing your limits and extending your reach. There comes a point in every initiative when you must recognize the risks and move forward anyway. Remember, you learn the most from failure, so take what chances you can afford.

Keeping the mind fresh, fertile, and open to new perspectives—the prerequisites of innovation—is a must if you want to effectively conduct business worldwide. There are endless ways of opening your mind that you can get to work on right now. View as many Web sites as possible. For example, check out www.ImprovEdge.com, which uses the techniques of improvisational theater to help executives learn to think fast, react to sudden changes, and build truly effective teams.

Beyond surfing the Internet, take long walks in unfamiliar neighborhoods. See foreign films. Meet people in other professions. Join social groups that attract members of other nationalities. Don’t withdraw when confronted with cultural differences—hang in there and ask yourself why you feel the way you do. This is real learning. Give yourself a chance to discover your own unexamined values and assumptions and you will find it a lot easier to accept others’ unfamiliar approaches!

©2001 Laurel Delaney. All rights reserved.

Back to cultural intelligence. According to Miller's article, David Livermore, executive director of the Global Learning Center in Grand Rapids, Mich., and author of "Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The New Secret to Success," has fresh insights to share on the topic. I have not read his recently published book so I cannot comment on its content.

However, I have read Silvia Cambie's and Yang-May Ooi's new book, "International Communications Strategy: Developments in cross-cultural communications, PR and social media" which examines the cross-cultural challenges facing the communication industry and offers experienced advice.

Whether derived from an article, book or experience, one cannot emphasize enough the importance of cultural competence in the world of business.

Television, consumer electronic and white good producer Panasonic Corp., which already has a sizable chunk of Japan's home appliance market, is aggressively pushing into India and Europe by considering local production in those areas to take advantage of lower distribution and manufacturing costs not to mention acquiring a competitive edge in delivery time.

Important Insight

Panasonic sees ...

... emerging markets -- defined by the company as Brazil, India, Russia, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey and the Balkan states -- overtaking North America and Europe as the biggest overseas market for its overall consumer products by 2013.

Read more about this here.

Panasonic sporting some heavy duty innovation.

“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are ... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise." ~ Henry David Thoreau

Hope your weekend brings clarity. The photo above is taken outside of Chicago in Rogers Park, Illinois.

Photo credit: Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog