Global Opportunities and New Markets

OPIC kicked off its 2013 Expanding Horizons series in Cleveland yesterday  by educating 100 Ohio small business owners about how OPIC products can help them take advantage of investment opportunities in emerging markets – the very markets where a majority of the world’s economic growth will take place in coming years.

Co-hosted with the Minority Business Development Agency Business Center-Cleveland, the half-day seminar was a hands-on tutorial in the innovative financial tools – among them financing and political risk insurance – that OPIC has used for four decades to help Ohio businesses successfully invest in those markets.

A profile of DLZ Corporation, a Columbus engineering firm that used an OPIC loan for a hydro power project in India as a springboard to subsequent growth.

“Ohio has a long tradition of innovation, particularly as an incubator for small businesses and new technologies. We believed Cleveland was an important place to come to as its SMEs consider engaging in the global marketplace,” said OPIC Director of Outreach and Public Affairs Dr. Larry Spinelli, who led the seminar.

“And our message is this: there are a lot of opportunities in emerging markets, but also challenges. OPIC is here to help Ohio small businesses to take advantage of those opportunities by managing those challenges in an effective way,” Dr. Spinelli said. “We couldn’t ask for a better partner in getting this message across than the MBDA.” 

Raland Hatchett, Executive Director of MBDA Business Center-Cleveland, said, “The information provided in the seminar was impactful, insightful and well-received – a fact supported by the number of questions from the minority-owned business owners in the audience. I highly recommend that others use the seminar to disseminate information about OPIC.”

Guest blog post by Francisco Sánchez, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and David Hinson, National Director, Minority Business Development Agency

Earlier this week, we attended the Doing Business in Africa Forum at the White House. This was the first forum of the Doing Business in Africa campaign that the Commerce Department launched three months ago in Johannesburg, South Africa. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank gave the opening remarks and focused on strengthening commercial ties between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. She emphasized that as the continent’s wealth increases, so does the demand for improved infrastructure, energy services, and high-quality consumer and agricultural products – all of which American companies are well positioned to provide.

What’s Level 1A? At Level 1, there is a single innovative idea. It improves or expands the existing business and measuring its success is no different from measuring the performance of the existing business. Also, there is no need to hire new kinds of experts or to substantially change job descriptions or core business process. At Level 1A, innovations can be implemented in a short time period — at most, a few months.

Innovation Principles: The most fundamental innovation discipline is one of learning quickly from experiments. That is easiest when feedback is rapid and the innovation makes only limited departures from the existing business. The most prepared innovators identify the specific performance measures that are likely to be affected by the innovation, understand how those changes will impact profitability, and are ready to react quickly should the experiment produce disappointing results.

The discipline of innovation is first and foremost a discipline of experimentation. Innovation projects have uncertain outcomes. Many managers, by training, abhor uncertainty. They endeavor to eliminate as much of it as possible. The more accurate the forecasts, the better the decision-making, the thinking goes.

STOPfakes.gov was launched to serve as a one-stop shop for U.S. government tools and resources on intellectual property rights (IPR). The federal agencies behind STOPfakes.gov have developed a number of resources to educate and assist businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as consumers, government officials, and the general public.