Last year Boston Consulting Group released a book titled Globality: Competing With Everyone From Everywhere For Everything. The concept is straightforward: ‘globalization’ was a trend marked by the expansion of large national companies into international markets. Globality, on the other hand, means that we are now in an age where the playing field is more level then ever before (largely because of the internet).
But if you don’t know who your competitors are and don’t even really know much about the emerging markets which you want to move into, how can you learn? How about swapping some employees?
My idea is to create an international employee exchange where similar employees from similar companies could change jobs for a while in order to experience a new culture. It’s like a reciprocal foreign exchange student program for companies instead of high schools and colleges. The ‘host’ companies would benefit from the new perspectives of contributors who are used to doing business in different cultures. Meanwhile, they might even be sowing the seeds for long term collaboration.
Would your company consider trading you temporarily for a foreign worker? Would you want to go? What do you think the benefits and drawbacks might be?
AfriGadget
Kiva
As an employee I would love to participate in a program like this!!!