Lesson 3 - Special entrepreneurial skills in the frame of post-modern globalization.

3.a How to grow internationally

Prerequisites for the internationally oriented, extroverted development of an entrepreneurial unit:

• Strengthen financial health and sustainability, which, besides ensuring the necessary liquidity, it will reinforce the sense of security and reliability for the foreign customers – note that these two concerns are of extreme importance in the contemporary international markets. Given the current unfavourable economic environment, there is a necessity for loans with very favourable terms something that only a system of micro-finance and local cooperative banks can offer;
• Given the analysed horizontal national advantages and the indisputable focus world competitiveness to the highly specialized diversity, build a regionally and sectoral well balanced system for the promotion of recognition, assertion and certification of the diversified qualities;
• Promote effective logistics services through necessary public investments and administrative / institutional modifications– on the one hand this will open a range of opportunities for entrepreneurship in this sector; on the other it will support the competitiveness of all activities in the international markets, as costs and quality of logistics services is of immense significance.

Strategies for the internationally oriented, extroverted development: Stimulate the following three-stages strategy for the internationally oriented, extroverted development of production units – note that the three stages should not be seen as a strict inescapable sequence, but rather as a dynamic order that can be effectively adjusted according to the specificities of each branch and each unit:

• Undertaking significant, international projects, either autonomously or in national and / or cross-national consortia;
• Developing business-to-business(B2B) cooperation, both for the distribution of finished, but also of semi-finished products as well;
• Developing / participating in business-to-customers (B2C) international networks.

3.b Features and skills – macro level

Modern promotion strategy instead of the old-fashioned protectionism: instead of focusing at lowering the (relative) prices of domestic production (traditional protectionism), concentrate on the improvement of qualitative aspects.

The present institutional framework worldwide limits the countries‟ competence to apply trade-restricting measures. Moreover, traditional protectionism that focuses mainly at lowering the (relative) prices of domestic production is also inefficient. Recall that cost benefits are not the only valid comparative advantage – in post-industrialized capitalism, also qualitative specificities and differentiation play a role. Therefore, for reasons of lacking ability, but mostly for the sake of efficiency, contemporary policy for promoting local productions should concentrate on the improvement of qualitative aspects – in place of the a policy protecting through exchange-value-orientated measures, develop a bundle of use-value-supporting initiatives.

• Promote highly specialized, small / medium scale production of significant quality inclusion – note that this is an aspect that fits to the analysed horizontal advantages of the Hellenic production;
• Develop the national framework for accreditation, certification and testing of qualitative production, covering domestic and international markets;
• Utilize the diplomatic corps(especially the group of trade attendants) for setting up the necessary networks in foreign markets;
• Finally, effectively utilize countervailing benefits (offsets) resulting out of national, public commercial contracts.

3.c Features and skills – micro level

Linguistic Skills; Multicultural Skills; Communicative – Social Skills; Specialized economic and technocratic knowledge with respect to the functioning of (re-) internationalized economy and institutional framework.