On Being An International Businessman

Innovation and Global Competitiveness

Rochester hosted their third annual “Eyes On The Future” event this past week – it provided an interesting mix of information, encouragement, and advice.

The keynote speaker, Richard Bendis, suggested that we need to consider innovation and the global marketplace in our offerings.  And when I looked at my own activities, I realized I’ve been on that page without thinking much about it.

Are you?

[ad#inline-body]

Rochester’s got a great set of resources

I’ve written before on living in the Western NY area, Rochester specifically, and I’m unapologetic about it.  And I mentioned this earlier in the year – 50% of people live within 50 miles of where they were born.

And I’m happy to be where I am.

GRE has defined a measure – idQ – Intellectual Density Quotient.  It’s about how smart an area is -and we’ve got it;-) Click here to find out more about idQ.

It’s an interesting matchup against communities across the US, and gives some reasoning about why I happen to like where I’m living.

Now I’m not one to put too much emphasis on polls or statistics – it’s clear that a couple of items we’ve performed well on recently tend to weight the measure to this area’s favor.  But it is nice to see what the area you’ve chosen to call home has going for it.

You can view their video on how Rochester excels with this link.

And that’s a pretty good thing – but it doesn’t explain how I’ve become an international business person…

Global business

That happened when I really thought about Bendis’ declaration that every business needs to think and act globally.

And while I offer my IT consulting services in the US, I have a global presence with LinkedIn.

I’ve published “The LinkedIn Personal Trainer” as a paperback, and that’s sold through Amazon, Lulu, and every other book retailer.  It’s written in English, so I’m not likely to sell many copies in non-English speaking areas, but physically, the book is available over huge portions of the world.

The blog is available globally through the internet, and with that, I have the opportunity to sell my e-book everywhere.

Yup – by filling out my web page and a form of payment (credit card or paypal), I’ll conduct a transaction with anyone.

And I do all of that without any significant overhead or effort.

And that’s pretty cool…

Some numbers

When I returned home, I had to look at how things were going in that regard – and it’s fairly impressive.

While I have access to e-book sales, paperbacks account for a larger portion, and I can’t tell where those sell.

But what I can see – is that sales cover most states in the US and twelve different nations worldwide.  The blog is read worldwide and in all states.

And that’s an interesting realization.

Innovation?

This seemed natural to me, take a topic that had lots of questions – how to use LinkedIn – and create a resource.

When I started, I realized that the marketplace was completely empty of books – but with millions of users and huge numbers joining, the need was present and growing.

I believe the line from Robots was “See a need, fill a need”, and that’s what happened.

But apparently not often enough.  Bendis wants to encourage everyone to innovate – that’s the point of his mission over at “Innovate America“.

Already working with the game plan

And so I’m ready to go – with new business across the globe.

Are you?