This is some new, exciting research coming out of France, by Dr. Camille Baulant and Dr. Serge Blondel, both of whom will in Boston, in March.  It's a French article but here's the English abstract below.

Croatia joins European Union in 2012: How can Croatia export efficiently in the Global Market?

The main aim of the article is to analyse how Croatia inserts in the world economy. As the world economy changes, the insertion strategy needs to change also. The country can’t any more choose an insertion based on export markets as well as choose an insertion based on internal economy. Nowadays, we know well the limits of the strategy of growth only based on export markets. The paper presents the three main points of the growth strategy of Croatia: tourism exports, industry specialisation and the key role of FDI to finance its growth. On the opposite side, Croatia must be careful because its industrial exports are still highly dependant of price-competitiveness and the high exchange rate policy could damage its exports.

Consultants are often maligned as being expensive, hired guns, who deal with your company at arm’s length.  But, on the flip side, you won’t be a successful entrepreneur with only limited knowledge in a critical business specialty.  "How to best use consultants?" is the topic on the next episode of the Language of Business.

We will be filming this week and next and click on the guests' names below for their LinkedIn profiles or company web sites. This episode will air in mid-Feburary.


John Thomas, is a Managing Director and Partner, and a member of the Global Leadership Team at L.E.K. Consulting. John also heads L.E.K.’s global Aviation & Travel practice and is also active in our Private Equity practice. John has more than 23 years experience in strategy, financial, commercial, operational and organizational consulting to the aviation industry and has worked with most of the leading airlines around the world on a broad range of major issues.
 
Julie Marcus provides management direction through market research and business intelligence to executive search firms, Fortune 500 companies and private organizations for competitive intelligence, talent recruitment and executive search on a global level. 

Adam Averback Your Party. Our Excitement. Your Ideas. Our Creativity. Your Guests. Our Talent. Together we’ll make it happen.  Party Excitement brings innovative ideas, outstanding talent and amazing energy to every event. Our goal is to meet and exceed all of your expectations.

Sean Sanker Bay State IT offers IT consulting, network and desktop support, and managed IT services both remote, and onsite. We pride ourselves on providing a superior level of IT support extending throughout every facet of your organization. Whether your needs are basic network - desktop support, or you're looking to implement large networks, data backups, disaster recovery, virtual environments, and network monitoring Bay State IT is here to offer a truly comprehensive IT support solution for your business.
 

Check out this fascinating Radio Entrepreneurs interview with Brenda Bence, a sought after executive on six continents for her expertise in corporate branding and for her career-boosting, award-winning Personal Branding System. The interview link is here and her web site can be accessed through this link.  We linked her in via Skype on the broadcast. Brenda's book is available here, too. 

We are in transit but everyone arrived safely, including our bags. Thanks for following us this week!

We wrapped up the final day of our trip with a journey to the Great Wall and Forbidden City.  Today was the best day, weather wise, of the entire week, too.  Enjoy the pictures and we'll be back in Boston on Saturday night.

You've built up your company and you’re beginning to taste success—congratulations!  What do you do next to capitalize on it? 

Episode #10 (Capitalizing on Business Success) is now on-the-air. The full 30-minute episode is here, featuring Jon Lieber, Furqan Nazeeri, Rob May and Ryan Traeger. Click on their names below for the individual interview segments.

Continuous business improvement for start-ups, and established ventures: The Language of Business.

Jon Lieber
Jon Lieber is a seasoned financial and operations executive with strong leadership skills and significant experience in: strategic planning, capital raising, investor/board relations, budgeting and financial reporting, and mergers and acquisitions in emerging growth companies.  Here's his LinkedIn profile. 

Furqan Nazeeri 
Furqan Nazeeri is a technology entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience building and managing high growth software companies. He is currently a Partner at extensionEngine and is the founder or co-founder of 3 high tech startups.  Click here for his LinkedIn profile. 

Rob May
Rob is a frequent speaker at technology conferences and as an avid writer, Rob started the successful Business Pundit blog and currently contributes to publications such as VentureBeat and Wired. Rob was recently named to Boston Business Journal's 40 Under 40 which honors the city's top leaders. Here's his LinkedIn profile. 

Ryan Traeger
Ryan Traeger began his career as an advertising executive, and while pursuing his MBA at Boston College, he founded achvr. achvr is a social media tool used for tracking, discovering and sharing interests.  You can learn more about Ryan on his LinkedIn profile.

Our 2nd team is finishing up its presentation and about to take questions. They had an excellent turnout and rocked their presentation. Go Eagles!

Our first of two teams just presented to executives and a financial journalist. The students did great and received excellent feedback. So genuinely proud of them!

We had our Welcome Banquet last night to celebrate 11 consecutive years of working together and to welcome this year's group. Over 15 diverse dishes served.

Our two teams each sent over in excess of 100 slides in December. The next step is (today) to distill these down to a crucial core, and tomorrow translate the final slides into Chinese and run through a Practice Session.

Thursday is presentation day and on Friday (day 5!) we climb the Great Wall and visit the Forbidden City.