I have decided to write this blog because I am passionate about international trade and proud of the achievements of many of our great North West businesses, which I would like to share with you.
We in the North West International Trade Team are having a very busy time at the moment and I’m exceedingly pleased. Let me explain. There has almost never been a better time to export – we have a pound that makes exports competitive, and despite the downturn many countries around the globe have continued to grow their economies - for example Qatar grew last year at 16% and sectors such as environmental technologies, energy or life sciences have been doing pretty well. The fact that we’re busy means that more and more companies in the North West are recognising the opportunity and are coming to UKTI for help – that’s why I’m so delighted.
I’ve been in Liverpool quite a lot this week. I chaired an internationalisation track at the annual conference of the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and I was on a Dragons’ Den panel at the Software City event. I’m really interested in what motivates firms to internationalise, so the conference was really useful and some of the papers had interesting views on the role of networks in the process. More on this in future blogs but I thought you may like to hear about some of the amazing ideas I heard about at Software City.
One company had created a talking travel guide that uses GPS to locate where you are in the world and provides appropriate content. When I was in Dallas the previous week, I thought how useful this would have been when standing on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. Another was connecting fans at stadia with each other, with vendors of all manner of things, and even sports stats experts! I thought this might catch on at cricket matches when there’s a lot of time to fill for spectators! The most amazing one, however, was a virtual gift shop where people could buy virtual 3d gifts to send to their friends on Facebook, Twitter etc.
As a fifty something, just coming to terms with the blogosphere and social media, this was something I found fascinating and demonstrated that we all need to adapt to the new digital and interactive media age and there are many ways to make money while doing it.
I promise to try to keep my blogs light and interesting, and of course I’d be really interested in hearing your comments about anything I have to say.
3 comments
Comment by Steve Shacklock posted on
Hi Clive,
Like you we are passionate about this and in particular languages at Euro London have a look at our website and blogs at http://eurolondonappointments.wordpress.com/
All the best,
Steve
Comment by Clive Drinkwater posted on
Hi Steve, really enjoyed the "sinking" video on your blog. My father once told me a story about his company that had a poor translation on a box. It should have said "Ce carton contient" (this box contains), but it said "Ce carton content" (This happy box). Got lots of others but cross cultural communication and ability to negotiate in foreign language is crucial to international success.
Comment by Steve Shacklock posted on
Hi Clive, Glad you liked it. My colleague in our Manchester Office does a lot of work with MIDAS, so if you ever need any help with case studies or selling the benefits if "internationalism" do get in touch.
All the best,
Steve