Archive for the ‘Global Entrepreneurship’ Category

On Thursday night, Campaign Chairs Barbara & Craig Barrett announced the successful completion of the Thunderbird Campaign: an effort to raise $65M in gifts and pledges by 2011 (our 65th anniversary) to support Thunderbird’s mission.   In a little over five years, thousands of alumni and friends around the world came together around a shared desire to invest in Thunderbird, to help this pioneering institution created in the heart of Arizona 65 years ago, to continue to educate global leaders who can bring about peace and prosperity around the world.

Like the rest of trustees attending the small, private celebration, I was humbled and moved.  This campaign means much more than $65M for all of us: it means 65 million expressions of commitment to our mission, of recognition of the daily work of our faculty and staff, of encouragement to keep finding new ways to change more lives around the world through education and thought leadership.

I can’t possibly document all that was said over the last three days, the tears, the gratitude, the generosity.  But I will leave you with one story, provided by one of our thousands of donors, an octogenarian, World War II veteran who, without any expectation of personal recognition, signed the biggest check we received.  We asked him why he chose to support Thunderbird.  This is his answer:

When I was a freshman in college, a young man enjoying life, I was asked to join the army to help my country and the world.  And so I did.  I was trained as a pilot in a place just like the Thunderbird field where we’re sitting today.  I flew, I fought and I was proud to make a difference.  As an old man, I want to keep helping my country and the world.  And what better way to do that than by helping Thunderbird train thousands of leaders from around the world who will help build a more secure, more peaceful and more prosperous world?  As an old man, I cannot fly anymore.  So I decided to let Thunderbird fly for me, to let Thunderbird fly forever.

I really enjoyed our panel at last week Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting on the design of technologies for economic empowerment, moderated by Chelsea Clinton.

- Oscar winning actress Geena Davis presented data on how media contributes to perpetuating gender stereotypes in the U.S. and around the world.  Her Geena Davis Institute has found, for example, that male roles in Hollywood movies outnumber female roles by 3:1.

- Neil Bellefeuille, of The Paradigm Project, explained their approach to use market-based approaches to introduce clean stove technology in very low-income communities were traditional cooking techniques are responsible for thousands of smoke-related deaths and heath problems, millions of wasted hours in wood recollection and transportation, and vast deforestation.

- Toshi Nakamura, founder of The Kopernik, described their innovation/aid/market place approach to designing and distributing new technology solutions to meet energy, lighting, or water challenges in underdeveloped environments.  He also praised Thunderbird TEM Lab students for their recent consulting work in Indonesia for his organization!

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In my latest op-ed (El Mundo, April 26 2011, in Spanish) I describe the important role that foreign-born entrepreneurs have played and continue to play to drive innovation and business creation in the US.  Most of them came to the US to study, attracted by great universities and an attractive lifestyle. It was only after they were here that they were inspired to create a business.  When they do, they not only add their knowledge and skills to the American pool, they bring with them global social capital and a global mindset that helps make their companies, and hence the American economy, more globally competitive.

Because of cultural, linguistic, geographic and other factors, Spain, I argue, could be in a position to also become a global hub for talent from around the world.  And while unemployment and economic stagnation awakens protectionist instincts and anti-immigration sentiment, attracting talent from around the world may be a safe bet to building a globally competitive economy.

In the giant global social network for the 21st century, connectivity will determine competitiveness.

Trying to decide where in the world to invest? Wondering whether all the fuss about BRIC still stands? Here’s an idea: start by identifying nations with the most catching up to do and where people feel most optimistic about their future.  Low per capita income indicates there’s a lot of growth potential.  Optimism is a proxy for willingness to bet on one’s future.  The Global Barometer on Hope and Despair by WIN-Gallup International provides a great place to start.

If you look at the top-left (green) quadrant, here’s the list of top prospects:

• Asia: Vietnam and China
• Latin America: Brazil and Peru
• Africa: Nigeria and Ghana

In the rich world, Scandinavia would seem to be the safest bet, with Germany coming close.

Another way to slice the chart is to focus on the top-left quadrant and sort it out by population (potential consumer base).  In that case, here is the top ten:

1. China
2. India
3. Brazil
4. Nigeria
5. Bangladesh

Or you can sort it out by GDP (market size).  In that case, here is the top ten:

1. China
2. Brazil
3. India
4. Argentina
5. Malaysia

Finally, it is interesting that Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo are all in the top-left corner.

Thunderbird Vision 2020, Global Leadership-Global Impact, asks that we focus outward, not inward and that we find new and better ways to change lives, to empower individuals to bring about opportunities around the world by building good businesses.  Here’s one example.

By Wynona Heim, Program Manager, Thunderbird for Good

The Vital Voices award ceremony was a wonderful event, and Fatema Akbari and her daughter Shahla did a beautiful job at the acceptance speech, and as Ambassadors for the 10,000 Women program, Project Artemis, and their native Afghanistan.  Fatema stole the show when she got up to the microphone at the end of the speech that her daughter had translated for her and said in English: “I want to make a special thank you to Vital Voices, the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, and Thunderbird for all of their support of Afghan women.  Next time I come to the United States, I will speak only English.”  She was the ONLY awardee to get a standing ovation at the END of her speech.

Her Vital Voices video, which includes the interview with you, is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt6I_KNXUZ0

By J. Oseas Ramírez Assad ‘11

Estimado Angel,
…
I wanted to share with you that this Sunday I just got back from Cambodia where I was participating in a TEM lab for the last five weeks. We worked on a project for DDD (Digital Divide Data), a social enterprise that hires disadvantaged Cambodian youth (from very poor families, landmine victims, etc.) and trains them on basic IT skills to provide digitization services. At the same time, DDD gives them a scholarship to study a university degree so that they can get a better job when they graduate, thus breaking the cycle of poverty they were in. Our project consisted in helping DDD determine whether and how they could offer their digitization services locally in the healthcare and financial services sectors. In the end, we were able to present the client with valuable insight about their organization as well as concrete, actionable items as they required. This will help them strengthen their business model in order to continue furthering their social mission

The reason why I wanted to share this with you is that since I started my studies in Thunderbird a year and a half ago, this is the first time in which I have experimented what it means to enact our mission of creating sustainable prosperity worldwide. The mission is what made me choose Thunderbird above other programs and it was fundamental for me to live it before graduating. This took place greatly in part thanks to the support you provided to me through Mr. Scott to address the IIE to allow a Fulbright to participate in such a program, so I wanted to thank you for your support.

Estimado Angel, gracias: esta experiencia ha tenido un gran impacto en mi vida.

Nos vemos pronto – ¡saludos!

It seems impossible to disassociate Arizona from immigration debates after the most (in)famous law in the State’s history–SB1070–was passed last year.  The AACSB’s Deans Conference in Phoenix this week couldn’t be an exception, and I was given the honor of moderating the panel on immigration and business schools featuring also Kenneth R. Keeley of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and Dean Michael Luger of the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester.

Here’s a summary of my thoughts:

• Immigration can be and has been a driver of innovation and economic growth in the US economy.
• According to data from the Kauffman Foundation (see my posting Connectivity means Competitiveness) immigrant-founded companies generated $52B in revenues and 450K jobs in 2005. Over half of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were born outside the US. And more than a quarter of all engineering and technology companies created in the US between 1995 and 2005 had one foreign-born founder.
• According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, non-citizen inventors generated 24.2% of all patent applications in 2006 (up from 7.3% in 1998).
• More than half of the immigrants that go on to create businesses in the US originally came to the US to study.
• The #1 discipline of study among foreign students coming to the US is business (21.1% in 2009/10).  Business plus STEM fields account for 67.2% of all foreign students in the US.
• Mainland China, India and South Korea are the main sources of foreign students, each accounting for more than twice as many students as any other country.  Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and Saudi Arabia come next. China and Saudi Arabia have shown the highest growth last year (30% and 25% each).
• Immigration debates tend to center around how to best keep immigrants out, but the future of the American economy requires policies that proactively attract the right types of immigrants, and universities (and business schools) are the best vehicle to do that.
• H1B Visas granted by the US went down dramatically after 9/11, from 163,000 in 2001 to less than 80,000 in 2002, 03 and 04, and not back to 85,000. Not surprisingly, the percentage of foreign students at Thunderbird peaked in 2001 (67%) and declined to around 44% in 2008. Total number of foreign students declined in the US between 2002 and 2006 (and is recovering now).

I asked my colleague Kip Harrell to share his thoughts on this matter and here are some highlights:

• Rankings tend to penalize schools with high national diversity because employment difficulties of foreign students hurt “employed at graduation” and “3 months after graduation” metrics.
• International student employment is not only more difficult in the US market, but also in finding employment at home
• Helping international students develop networks, both in US and their home country is critical for employment success
• International diversity is critical in educating true global leaders, but the complexities of attracting the right students and helping them find employment should not be underestimated

Spain’s President Zapatero convened this week a group 39 top business leaders to discuss the country’s competitiveness and his government’s commitment to press ahead with much needed social security, labor, and energy reforms (see report and photos in El País).  It is reassuring to see the government seek a close dialog with the private sector, especially as drum rolls are heard louder in international capital markets, unfairly yet dangerously comparing Spain’s solvency with Greece’s and Ireland’s.

The problem however is that the government seems to be leaving out of this dialog the part of the business community that can do the most to pull Spain’s economy back from its 20% unemployment: entrepreneurs.  Over the long run, it is not mature, large companies that create jobs, but new ventures.  Large companies represent what has worked well in the past (a few represent what went really wrong), not necessarily what will work well in the future.

Zapatero announced the creation of a new National Council of Competitiveness.  Here’s a wild idea: appoint to the council the most successful entrepreneurs in Spain (Spanish or not) as well as the most successful Spanish entrepreneurs who chose to create their companies abroad.  The first group can help shed light on the best Spain has to offer from a competitiveness standpoint, while the latter can help underline where Spain’s weaknesses lie.  Then pepper the Council with a sample of Spanish innovators in the best universities and research centers in the world. They know better than anyone what it takes to attract talent and drive innovation.  Together they may be able to draft a roadmap for a new innovation-driven economy.

While economic reforms are absolutely necessary, policy itself won’t create jobs, new businesses will.  The stimulus the Spanish economy desperately needs is a stimulus of innovation and entrepreneurship.

I posted the following on Twitter last week (CabreraAngel):

More than 50% of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were born outside the US – @KauffmanFDN http://bit.ly/gtqVnq

In a few hours it had been re-tweeted more than 35 times, it has been quoted numerous times and it even made it to Twitter’s home page (the modern-day equivalent of the New York Times’ front page).  The apparently straightforward statistic seemed to touch a sensitive fiber in the business community: the idea that innovation-driven entrepreneurship flourishes in environments where talent from around the world is brought in together.

My tweet was based on data from a study on entrepreneurship and immigration (by Duke and Berkely researchers Wadhwa, Saxenian, Rissing and Gereffi), which I found via the Kauffman Foundation and which provided several additional jewels:

• More than half of the foreign-born founders of U.S. technology and engineering businesses initially came to the United States to study. Very few came with the sole purpose of starting a company. Almost 40 percent of immigrant founders entered the country because of a job opportunity, with only 1.6 percent entering the country with the sole purpose of entrepreneurship. They typically founded companies after working and residing in the United States for an average of 13 years.
• Immigrant founders were educated in a diverse set of universities in both their home countries and across the United States. No single U.S. institution stands out as a source of immigrant founders. Similarly, those who received their undergraduate degrees in India or China graduated from a diverse assortment of institutions. Even the famed Indian Institutes of Technology educated only 15 percent of Indian technology and engineering company founders.
• Immigrant entrepreneurs tend to move to cosmopolitan technology centers. The regions with the largest immigrant population also tend to have the greatest number of technology startups. On average, 31 percent of the engineering and technology companies founded from 1995 to 2005 in the 11 technology centers that were surveyed had an immigrant as a key founder. This compares to the national average of 25.3 percent.
• Technology centers with a greater concentration of immigrant entrepreneurs in their state averages include Silicon Valley (52.4 percent), New York City (43.8 percent), and Chicago (35.8 percent). Three technology centers had a below-average rate of immigrant-founded companies: Portland (17.8 percent), Research Triangle Park (18.7 percent) and Denver (19.4 percent).

In a 21st century economy fueled by ideas, the key determinant of competitiveness will be connectivity.  Talent begets talent. Ideas attract ideas and generate new ones. Ideas drive innovation and new ventures. Ventures create jobs and wealth (new companies are responsible for practically all net jobs created in the US in the last three decades). Wealth attracts talent. And so on.

Economic crises tend to provoke protectionist knee-jerk reactions to build up walls (literally and figuratively) to curb immigration and trade.  Yet, it is by opening doors intelligently (not by slamming them shut) that economies can find their way back to sustainable, innovation-driven growth.

The 10,000 Women Initiative, run by Goldman Sachs, will partner with the State Department to bring Pakistani women entrepreneurs for intensive training at the Thunderbird School for Global Management in Arizona

via Secretary Clinton Provides Remarks With Pakistani Foreign Minister | U.S. Department of State Blog. (includes video of Clinton’s remarks)