Ranked #1 in the World
Loading ...
Corporate leaders who want to make a positive difference in the world can learn at least four important lessons from successful global entrepreneurs, Thunderbird President Ángel Cabrera, Ph.D., said during a panel discussion Oct. 14 in downtown Phoenix.
“You’re not looking at your business venture as a way of extracting value away from others,” Cabrera told an audience of entrepreneurs at an annual panel discussion on entrepreneurship organized by Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Phoenix Alumni Chapter. “You are obsessed with creating value.”
>> Read President Cabrera’s Knowledge Network blog, Global Leaders Can Be Made
>> Video: Do entrepreneurs need education? (2:04)
>> Video: Keys to Effective Leadership (2:41)
Thunderbird Professor Robert Hisrich, Ph.D., moderated the panel, which included Greater Phoenix Economic Council President and CEO Barry Broome and Oxford Learning Executive Director Jan Belt. Hisrich is an entrepreneur, author and director of Thunderbird’s Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship.
Cabrera said entrepreneurs who make a lasting impact on a global scale have at least four things in common. They develop a global mindset, create global value, build global connections and demonstrate global citizenship.
“Those values have become extremely valuable for global leaders in general,” he said.
Global mindset
Global leaders who want to emulate the success of global entrepreneurs must first develop an ability to work across cultures in different conditions.
“You need to have an understanding of differences around the world,” Cabrera said. “At Thunderbird, we call this a global mindset.”
He said globalization brings people together but will never flatten these differences. Different regions of the world will always have different legal systems, infrastructure standards, religions, languages and cultures.
“The world is filled with nuances,” he said. “If you go to India or China or somewhere else, and you think you’re going to do business there the same way that you do it back home, you’re in big trouble.”
Global value creation
Next comes global value creation.
“Global mindset by itself won’t make you an effective leader,” Cabrera said. “It might allow you to travel the world, write a lot of books and have a lot of fun. But it won’t make you a global leader.”
He said successful global leaders must turn this global mindset into value creation by looking at differences and seeing opportunities.
“When entrepreneurs see lack of talent or lack of resources, they see opportunities to create value,” he said. “They strive to create value.”
Cabrera said corporate leaders sometimes take the opposite approach to business. They build barriers to prevent competition and extract value from suppliers, customers and employees.
“Their focus is on extracting value, not creating value,” Cabrera said. “If they can pay their employees less or treat them worse to improve the bottom line, then that’s what they do.”
Global connections
The third thing that successful global leaders must do to create sustainable prosperity is build relationships of trust.
“The success of any business is never based on how sophisticated your financial plan may be,” Cabrera said. “At the end of the day, successful business is about people. At the end of the day, your banker will look you in the eye, and he or she will trust you or not. Your client will look you in the eye, and he or she will trust you or not. At the end of the day, it is these person-to-person relationships that make a business happen.”
Cabrera said it is easy to build these relationships among people who are similar to each other. But global leaders must reach beyond their comfort levels and do this with people who are not the same.
Global citizenship
Finally, Cabrera said, successful global leaders must care deeply about the consequences of their enterprises. “Not just for their investors,” he said. “But for everybody around them.”
He called this concept global citizenship.
Cabrera said successful global entrepreneurs often master these four skill sets better than other types of leaders.
“The framework that an entrepreneur uses to look at the world is much more useful and valuable than the traditional, classic strategy that business schools have taught for decades,” Cabrera said. “That is why entrepreneurship has become a core part of what we do and teach at Thunderbird.”
Leave a Reply