The Global Entrepreneur
Best Practice
BY DANIEL J. ISENBERG
The Global Entrepreneur
A new breed of entrepreneur is thinking across borders – from day one.
FOR A CENTURY AND MORE, companies have ventured abroad only after establishing themselves at home. Moreover, when they have looked overseas, they haven’t ventured too far afield, initially. Consumer healthcare company Johnson & Johnson set up its first foreign subsidiary in Montreal in 1919 – 33 years after its founding in 1886. Sony, established in 1946, took 11 years to export its first product to the United States, the TR-63 transistor radio. The Gap, founded in 1969 – the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon – opened its first overseas store in London in 1987, a year after the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Companies are being born global today, by contrast. Entrepreneurs don’t automatically buy raw materials from nearby suppliers or set up factories close to their headquarters. They hunt for the planet’s best manufacturing locations because political and economic barriers have fallen and vast quantities of information are at their fingertips. They also scout for talent across the globe, tap investors wherever they may be located, and learn to manage operations from a distance – the moment they go into business.
Take Bento Koike, who set up Tecsis to manufacture wind turbine blades in 1995. The company imports raw materials from North America and Europe, and its customers are located on those two continents. Yet Koike created his globe-girding start-up near São Paulo in his native Brazil because a sophisticated aerospace industry had emerged there, which enabled him to develop innovative blade designs and manufacturing know-how. Tecsis has become one of the world’s market leaders, having installed 12,000 blades in 10 countries in the past decade and racked up revenues of $350 million in 2007. Standing conventional theory on its head, start-ups now do business in many countries before dominating their home markets. In
BY DANIEL J. ISENBERG
The Global Entrepreneur
A new breed of entrepreneur is thinking across borders – from day one.
FOR A CENTURY AND MORE, companies have ventured abroad only after establishing themselves at home. Moreover, when they have looked overseas, they haven’t ventured too far afield, initially. Consumer healthcare company Johnson & Johnson set up its first foreign subsidiary in Montreal in 1919 – 33 years after its founding in 1886. Sony, established in 1946, took 11 years to export its first product to the United States, the TR-63 transistor radio. The Gap, founded in 1969 – the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon – opened its first overseas store in London in 1987, a year after the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Companies are being born global today, by contrast. Entrepreneurs don’t automatically buy raw materials from nearby suppliers or set up factories close to their headquarters. They hunt for the planet’s best manufacturing locations because political and economic barriers have fallen and vast quantities of information are at their fingertips. They also scout for talent across the globe, tap investors wherever they may be located, and learn to manage operations from a distance – the moment they go into business.
Take Bento Koike, who set up Tecsis to manufacture wind turbine blades in 1995. The company imports raw materials from North America and Europe, and its customers are located on those two continents. Yet Koike created his globe-girding start-up near São Paulo in his native Brazil because a sophisticated aerospace industry had emerged there, which enabled him to develop innovative blade designs and manufacturing know-how. Tecsis has become one of the world’s market leaders, having installed 12,000 blades in 10 countries in the past decade and racked up revenues of $350 million in 2007. Standing conventional theory on its head, start-ups now do business in many countries before dominating their home markets. In