Some of the greatest  minds and movers in the field of investment will assemble at UNCTAD’s WIF 2010 to discuss how to promote sustainable investment and development in the new phase of globalization and take advantage of opportunities that could rise across the globe. This is how UNCTAD (www.unctad.org) announces their WIF 2010. Global-Arena will be present, and we think we can contribute to UNCTAD’s goals in two ways;

- Including sustainability indices in our economic parameters is already a set goal, and we want to discus how these parameters should be developed , for our global platform we need to be able to compare all countries and regions, supported by independant, trusted data.
Only then are we able to support our clients in descision making during location analysis

- Another aspect of supporting sustainable investment and development is to give developing and under-developped countries and regions a fair chance to compete for investment from abroad. We believe that if www.global-arena.com offers a comparisson on independant, trusted data between countries in every state of development, that will greatly increase the acces to FDI for the least developped countries, since that comparisson takes away that part in a risk assesment currently regarded as “the great unknown”
We want to take up the challenge to compare Mali to Finland and to Vietnam. To achieve this, we need the help of UNCTAD to research and create data sources of the same integrity as we currently use for Europe and USA.

We see it as our responsibility to support investment descisions with (standardized) sustainibility parameters (eg Carbon Footprint, sustainable development and innovation), and next to that offer every country acces to FDI via a fair comparison of their advantages and challenges.

If you are managing an Western FDI Agency that you are likely in this situtation; you face a rapidly increasing demand for FDI inflow combined with short term significant pressure on your FDI Agency budget.

And not to forget to further complicate the situation you’re in;  competition is increasing globally and heating up fast?

What could you do if you recognize this pattern as the situation you are in or heading towards? 

In my point of view this scenario most likely applies to most Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) promotion agencies globally. The current global ecomonic environment and situation is to complicated to assume that there is a one-size-fits-all problem and solution. But I believe that 80% will face this pattern of budget pressure already or very soon while having to deliver more FDI results at the same time in a more complex, more competitive and larger market due to the changing patterns in global FDI flows.

Now I worry about this as well as a business leader, even though our marketplace for global business locations provides a solution exactly to this problem. My interpretation is that innovation is hard and takes time to get adopted – even online innovation. I experience the FDI market appears largely as a conservative market – in particular in Europe. That is why it will be hard for most agencies to deliver what they need to in the near future. The good news is that there are proven solutions on the market that will support you with the transformation of your agency and FDI business model.

European government budgets (lets not forget the USA) are under more pressure every day, as governments realize that over spending and government lending have painful limits in uncertain markets. The need for Foreign Investments is mounting rapidly. FDI agency executives need a plan to cut budget and get more results delivered fast in a generally soft FDI market where companies are very cautious with strategic investments.

I recommend a strategy that is focused on;

1. intelligent online promotion (cheeper than anything else)
2. pro active investor acquisition (most effective but also most complex)
3. transform the agency from volume processing to value creation (the only way to cut budget while increading output)

This requires that you can change your organization to become the leader in these areas. We know how to do that and have the services you need to implement this fast.

Do you have a different perspective on where the industry is heading? I welcome your point of view.