Growth in the new flat world

Looking up
originally uploaded by Reza Vaziri

I enjoyed looking through the CATA report, “Growth in the New Flat World Guide Provides Canadian Businesses Competitive Insight in Addressing Global Business Challenges” (available from CATA). The report discusses many pragmatic strategies for growing a technology business in today’s challenging global environment. The authors start by layering the notion of “long tail” markets over the “flat world.”

(Interestingly, a similar world construct was presented by my fellow panelist, Mark Bradley, during the Global CONNECT conference held at MaRS last week. Mark offered an overview of Web 2.0 tools as “must haves” for any business today.)

Whatever is the fashionable terminology of today any new company or a new product introduction has the luxury of thinking about its strategic entry into the market. Launching anything new is very risky – what are the ways to address these inherent risks?

When working with MaRS’ clients we go through a highly iterative but very simple process: identify the risks and operationalize them.

The Long Tail

CATA’s report also discusses how to address the “long tail” opportunities. It turns out that various “people-centric” issues are at the forefront of strategies proposed by the group of industry executives. It starts with the straightforward “Value of People”, and moves through “Partners and Alliances” all the way to the “Art of Execution”.

So where are the best people to succeed in this new world of global commerce and rapidly changing markets? Predictably, my answer is: right here, in Canada. Not only are Canadians masters of alliances. Apparently, it is now proven scientifically that groups composed of nationally and ethnically diverse members tend to more easily facilitate creativity in problem solving. (Read Is Creativity is a Foreign Concept? by Larry Yu in MIT Sloan Management Review.)

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