At Harvard Law School, Author Ethan Zuckerman recently told an audience that, “those who are open to diversity and cognitive border-crossings, are at a high risk of having good ideas.” I might add, not only good ideas, but also cost savings, increased efficiency, and preserved quality. Collectively, this is value creation that gets shared between both buyers and producers.
Let’s take a real example:
In the spring of 2013, a Vietnamese startup was looking to raise more money. Unfortunately, the venture capital market of Vietnam is less developed, with less funding to spread around among local startups. As such, the options are limited. To aid in their capital raising search, the digital startup decided to leverage the expertise of students at an American business school who were studying the venture capital market.
After reviewing the startup, the American students decided that the best option for the startup would be to try and crowdsource capital from investors. Unfortunately, the students are still just students. They might have understood the market place, but they knew very little about creating a presentation that could lure in potential investors.
In late spring, the students reached out to Quick2LAUNCH (naturally) and asked for help creating an impressive slide deck that could lure investors for the Vietnamese startup. Not surprisingly, the students waited until the last minute before asking for help. So our Q2L team was faced with the task of aiding the students in the last hour.
We (Q2L) handled the time constraint by having a team member in the US review the content of the deck, and then turning over the design to a team member in Asia who not only had expertise in design, but also had a familiarity with Asian business practices. The time difference was working in our favor.
In 24 hours, we did a full content review, engaged the Vietnamese startup through our intermediary students, and had the deck professionally designed by graphic designers on the other side of the world.
Bare with me….let’s take a look at globalization in full force:
A Vietnamese startup used American students, who used a company that took advantage of Indian graphic designers, to return a presentation that would crowdsource money from investors all over the world.
In 24 hours, their slide deck went from Vietnam to America to India to America and back to Vietnam.
It may seem like an intricate web, but the Vietnamese startup was able to turnaround a fantastic presentation in a matter of hours, with subject-matter expertise, and professional design input.
People often use Princess Diana’s death as an example of globalization. I will say, if it can work with your slide deck, it can probably happen anywhere. Time is a valuable commodity in every industry.
Oh, and in case you somehow never heard the Princess Diana example, here you go.
“An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was high on Scottish whiskey.”
