Eleven Things Entrepreneurs Must Know to Succeed in a Globalized World

There is a new breed of entrepreneurs that is already beginning to make their mark on our world. I am one of them. We are the eighties generation. We are as the music group POD says, “The Youth of the Nation.” While yes, there are many of us who are disillusioned, uncaring, depressed, and unethical; I am seeing today something truly amazing. There is a subculture of youth in both the United States and in every country in the world that gets it.
I am very fortunate to have friends in close to fifty countries.  As I wrote a few pages ago, in 2000, I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to go on a 53-day expedition to Spain, Florida, New Mexico, and Mexico called La Ruta Quetzal. On this trip I met three hundred fifty students from forty-three different countries. It has truly been priceless to be able to have these contacts. For example, during the Argentinean economic collapse in early 2002 I was able to jump on my computer and email Ana from Buenos Aires to see what the real situation was like. When a U.S. spy-plane was shot down in China in April 2001, I was able to email my friend Sonsoles in Beijing to get her take on the incident and her thoughts on what Jiang Zemin would do.
During the World Cup in June of 2002 I was able to chat live with my friend Kevin in Dublin as he grieved over each missed penalty kick in Ireland’s overtime elimination defeat to Spain. For the pre-1980 people reading, would it not have amazed you when you were seventeen to have had the ability to chat live from Florida with your friend in Dublin while both watching the same penalty shot being taken at the exact same time in Seoul, South Korea?
This new breed of entrepreneurs, even if we all do not yet fully grasp the impact of globalization and how important the Internet truly is, are either going through college right now or will in the next five years. The case studies they will have in Financial Management 202 will not be the rudimentary mathematical bores they perhaps were for many in their college days of old. They will be riveting tales of unlimited wealth, power, and innovation; in some cases collapse and fraud and in others extraordinary success.
I said a few paragraphs ago “there is a subculture of youth in both the United States and in every country in the world that gets it.” But what it is that we get? We understand the following eleven principles:

1.    The world is global and interconnected. A negative economic report from one country can ravage the economy of a continent; overnight. A trillion dollars can leave a country with the click of a few mice. An explosion in Shanghai can cause bond prices in London to jump 10% within an hour.
2.    Anyone with $1000 and some intelligence can either make a billion dollars or destroy the world.
3.    In our economic prosperity, we must strive toward creating a sustainable existence or else the end of our lives and our childrens’ lives will be years of horror and pain.
4.    Academic education is important, but at all but the best schools, an academic education will not give one the knowledge needed to be financially prosperous. As Thomas J. Stanley states in The Millionaire Mind, having a 1000 or 1500 on your SATs has no correlation to your likely net worth in twenty years. Just as important, if not more, is one’s education and learning outside the classroom.
5.    If one is going to become extraordinarily wealthy they better have integrity, ethics, and keep their accounting truthful and accurate.
6.    The world is going to change in tremendous ways over our lifetime.
7.    Competitive market economies work. An incentive system is necessary to get workers to work and a price system is necessary to properly allocate a limited supply of resources and goods. Competition is necessary to keep everyone honest and working efficiently to produce the optimum output with the minimum input. Although some believe capitalism creates inequities and is immoral, it is a few of the participants within this system that cause these unfair inequities. This lack of integrity among some participants will always be present. However, due to intelligent laws, regulations, oversight and the inherent positive properties of the market coupled with democracy such as transparency, freedom of the press, and a better educated proletariat this ethical problem is better now than in the days of centralized ownership of resources and dictatorships. Since there is no incentive to earn a profit or innovate, state-owned enterprises often breed inefficiency.
8.    However, without honest, ethical, and compassionate people at the helm of a democratic and market system, or the proper laws and legal institutions to ensure this integrity, this system is no better than totalitarianism, autarky, or anarchy. Further, we must always take principle number three into account.
9.    For prosperity to spread to developing countries we must not look to short run elixirs. It took 175 years to turn the U.S. into an economic superpower. The same change cannot take place in Somalia, Botswana, or Afghanistan without the proper development of human capital, industrial capital, and a fundamental legal framework.
10.    It is not he who works the hardest that succeeds; it is he who has the best ideas, works with the most intelligence, and builds the right team to help him accomplish his goals. The ability to adapt to change and ability to learn quickly is as important as what you know right now.