2013-05-25T00:30:17-04:00 Ted Zoller http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=ted-zoller Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Ted Zoller Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.981313 2011-09-26T12:04:58-04:00 2012-01-14T06:54:18-05:00

Ted Zoller http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-zoller/
Although the American startup community is still seen as the world's foremost, recent events may favor countries where new firms are inherently more apt to think globally. Let me explain what limits us -- and how we can transcend it.

The U.S. is by nature more insular than other countries with respect to new ventures. One reason has been the size of our domestic market. For years, an American startup could thrive just by targeting some segment of the country's hundreds of millions of prolific consumers or its booming domestic industries -- whereas in smaller countries such as Denmark and Sweden, or in large but poorer countries, firms with high ambitions have long had to look to international markets to remain competitive, as their domestic markets couldn't sustain them.

Today the big U.S. domestic market is no longer a surefire haven. With tepid growth, consumers and firms have tightened their spending, while government procurement is decimated by budget cuts. A lot of the action now is in places like the BRIC countries, Brazil Russia-India-China, which have big populations plus growing middle classes and industries, coupled with sovereign wealth that allows them to build competitive infrastructure. And, even entrepreneurs from the so-called PIIGs (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) are courting the BRICs. A number of Portuguese high-tech firms are building footholds in Brazil, aided in part by the fact that Portugal and its onetime colony share a history and a language.

This brings us to another factor that can make American entrepreneurs less globally minded: the relative geographic and cultural isolation of the U.S. We don't have a wide assortment of nearby neighbors, as nations in, say, Europe do. And while people from other countries are eager to learn the ways of the U.S., we don't always match that eagerness in return. In more senses than the literal one, others speak our language more than we speak theirs.

It's not as if Americans live in a bubble. Many of our startups have immigrant founders, as my friend Vivek Wadhwa points out, who can leverage contacts in their countries of origin. Many software and Internet-based firms, in particular, go global early. Increasing numbers of young Americans go abroad -- to study, to do research or charitable work, or just to travel -- and they have online friends in other countries from childhood. You could say the new generation is growing up more global than any in the country's past.

The challenge is to build on this international exposure and turn it into new globally oriented businesses across multiple industries. And for that we'll need to stretch ourselves and learn to have a global mindset in all aspects of new-firm formation.

A global mindset entails much more than trying to sell U.S. goods into foreign countries. It also entails more than learning the rules and customs of those countries, so as not to shoot oneself in the foot when opening an office overseas. A true global mindset requires moving beyond the simplistic starting point of taking an American idea and trying to transplant it "over there."

Truly global entrepreneurs might start from the other direction, building businesses around ideas and opportunities they discover elsewhere. One example is Amazon Millworks, founded by Andrew Sloop while he served on a Mormon mission to Peru. While there, Sloop met Peruvian carpenters who made exquisite furniture by hand. Today his North Carolina firm draws on these artisans to provide custom woodwork and furnishings for homes in the premium segment. Amazon Millworks was born global.

Entrepreneurs in technology fields must also learn the subtleties involved in tapping international markets and supply chains. Business researchers such as Erica Fuchs at Carnegie Mellon are finding, for instance, that the common practice of designing a product and then having it made in another country -- whether to save cost, or to get close to an emerging market -- may not play out so simply if the product is a highly innovative one like a new type of optoelectronics chip. Outsourcing can change the dynamics to the point where a given innovation is not as viable as it had seemed.

To quote from the title of one of Fuchs's papers, product innovators may have to think in terms of "design for location." Similarly, business models conceived for the U.S. market may not be scalable or even adaptable globally. Thus a key question is: what could help Americans get better attuned to both the opportunities and pitfalls of going global?

One template might be the Kauffman Foundation's Global Scholars program. Started in 2007 through a collaboration with Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, the program enables countries to send aspiring entrepreneurs here to the U.S. for 21 weeks of intensive learning from experts at our universities and innovative companies.

Along with learning to build new firms that can function well internally, Global Scholars have their outlooks and their networks expanded. They see how American business operates. Scholars from diverse countries in Europe and Asia learn from each other. Then they go home to propagate their global lessons, like the former Global Scholar who's now helping to foster cross-border entrepreneurship in adjoining areas of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.

Could such a program produce the same benefits for fledgling U.S. entrepreneurs? We think so. The Global Scholars program is now taking applicants from its home country for the first time. Next year, about 10 of America's best young prospects will learn in concert with a roughly equal number of the rest of the world's best.

So that's one approach. Many more possibilities exist. (Here's one: can the U.S. diplomatic corps help bring American entrepreneurs into other countries?) But above all, every American who dreams of building a great company has to know that being global is neither an option nor an add-on. It's the new reality. America's best exports are the talents of our entrepreneurial leaders unleashed in a global marketplace. Are American entrepreneurs born global? For our sake, I hope so.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.880469 2011-06-20T12:11:33-04:00 2011-08-20T05:12:01-04:00

Ted Zoller http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ted-zoller/
I was recently in a meeting with a young Turk entrepreneur who was clearly on a first-name basis with the Facebook founder. "Zuck" was held out as the symbol of the next generation of founders. Beyond being impressed by this important association, I was further struck by how Zuck represented perhaps a club, cohort or, may I say, a new generation of hip entrepreneur.

Perhaps thinking of my own mortality and the bitter recognition that I have aged out of "cool," I think back to the hip entrepreneurs of my day -- the Generation X -- and perhaps it is just a replay of those days. My Zuck would have been Steve Case, Meg Whitman, Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs, all of whom are still seen as pioneers, but do not enjoy the hip factor of the latest leaders -- except maybe Jobs, who has reinvented himself several times. I tried perhaps quixotically to convince myself that my generation is still hip, still has the mojo, and still matters. Perhaps things are the same and only time passes. I am reminded of the old Will Roger's quote, "Things aren't what they used to be, and probably never were..." So true, but...

The new Zuck generation is different. They are hyper-connected, social media- powered, real-time, virtual, global, open, socially aware and competitive. They are living Moore's Law. Many worry that this generation is too heavily branded, venture-capital powered, built to sell and quick-money oriented. While certainly there are examples where this is the case -- an intractable ingredient of human nature -- I have found this new generation actually to be more "built to last" than those in the past, generally looking to build companies that are "lean" and capable of long-range sustainability. And, in most cases, they have a keen sense of their relevance not only to their customer and market, but to our society.

But there is something to be said of a distortion that exists between the Zuck Generation and those who preceded it. Much has been made of a "digital divide" created between those connected on the web and those not. Yet this divide is more nuanced, more subtle: a divide between those who "get it" and those who don't.

The new class of entrepreneurs is a bit self-referencing and endogenous, mainly because it interacts as part of a networked community on the web, which reinforces itself. This is the case because these entrepreneurs live on the web. They are so young that the captain in Star Trek is not William Shatner, not Patrick Stewart, but the one from the recent movie that they watched on their computer, because they don't watch TV. They text faster than they speak, their identities are on the Web and their language does not contain as many vowels.

I go back to the Generation X from which I originate, and while most carry smart phones, they don't know how to use them. They aren't up on the hot apps. They don't know why anyone would be on Twitter. Many have only an underdeveloped identify on Facebook, if they have a page at all. Most think LinkedIn is cool. The only threaded discussion they join are to vet what type of vacuum cleaner to buy or to talk to their bank or airline.

But one truism of generational change is that the older generations generally carry capability. Members of Generation X now have the social power. It is their time in the sun. They are at the top of their game. This is their professional pinnacle. They are ready to invest. They are leading our greatest companies.

But the Zucks are out there in a parallel system that does not recognize their power conventionally. They are democratic, not hierarchical. They are networked, not structured. They understand competence and test it continuously. They are transformative. The Zuck Generation has trouble identifying with Gen X because the latter is old school.

This generation needs its Zucks as we needed ours, but perhaps most importantly, for us to sustain an entrepreneurially-driven economy, we need one another. Those with the capacity in the Gen X need to support the Zucks -- encourage, teach, coach and fund them. At the same time, leaders among the Zucks need to embrace the generation that precedes them, and bring them into their network. There are people who serve as critical land bridges or nodes between the Zucks and the Gen X's, but they are a precious few. We need more.

If we were to view entrepreneurship as only the domain of the Zucks, or the new generation that follows them, it would be to our peril. Entrepreneurship is one human phenomenon that is ageless and truly cannot be owned. It defies classification and transcends any socio-demographic stereotype. But what we can learn from the Zucks is that the power of entrepreneurship can be democratized, and the base can be widened.

By democratizing entrepreneurship, we are unleashing potentially one of the most potent economic powers we could conceive. It is the solution for our ailing economy. It will be up to those in the Gen X who now hold social power to embrace the new generation, empower it, and be prepared to let it transform our economy, and indeed our society.

My message to my fellow Gen Xers: Be prepared to open doors that may have been closed to you, because the folks coming up are more prepared than you were at their age. But recognize you still hold many of the keys to their success, and your job is to open them -- as the boomers did for you -- and not to gate-keep.

My message to the Zucks: Don't think for a minute that you don't need the generation behind you, as they hold many of the keys. And recognize that you are pioneering for the next generation who will likely best you, and will require you to open doors for them.]]>