 The GeoBridge is a non-profit research project that categorizes global sources of news, information, and applied knowledge about Online Business Networking and International Trade, with an emphasis on emerging technology standards and enabling software tools. Visitors are encouraged to recommend new topic categories and associated content. Austin, Texas, USA -- Establishing and maintaining international Business-to-Business (B2B) networking and collaboration activity is nearly always a lengthy process that often requires extensive business travel expenses, and therefore economically out of reach for many Small to Medium size Enterprises (SME).
Coincidentally, the advent of numerous
Sister City relationships has theoretically created the potential of
enabling SME's to initiate international business related dialogues via
virtual connections with industry peers across the internet, and
thereby defer travel costs until such time that potential trading
partners essentially become pre-qualified.
And yet, most Sister City relationships
have not evolved or matured beyond basic public-sector related
information exchanges (i.e. cultural and/or educational related
interaction and dialogue). Moreover, the few commercial encounters that
have reportedly occured, as a result of Sister City trade missions, are
nearly always between representatives of very large multinational
corporations.
Note, Sister Cities International
(SCI) is the official agency which links communities from the United
States with communities worldwide who share the primary goal of
developing long-term community partnerships through the strengthening
of cultural, educational, municipal, business, professional and
technical relationships.
With no formal process to enable
like-minded business contact introductions, even those small business
leaders that are aware of their local government's sister city
relationships often rate these programs as irrellevant for their
practical needs to explore and establish international partner
connections. Regardless, the raw potential of utilizing the internet
for the specific purpose of spawning new forms of global trade has
never been more promising. The challenge, however, is turning that
promise into reality.
Business Peer Open Collaboration With this thought in mind, the Economic TeleDevelopment Forum has launched the concept of the commerce-centric open peer-to-peer
(P2P) global business connections network -- the GeoBridge Project.
With no recognized term to define the underlying principles of this
concept, we offer BusinessPeer-to-BusinessPeer (BP2BP) as a tentative
descriptor. Note, the GeoBridge Project is primarily an information
technology (IT) research venture at this point in time, and no
organization has underwritten the proposed international pilot
commercial social networking program.
The typical application scenario in essence
is very simple. As a SME leader, I want to identify an appropriate
local distribution, research and development, manufacturing, or service
provider partner in a foreign country; I know the exact criteria that
defines my perfect business partner; I know the foreign market(s) where
I would consider establishing a business partnership; I have the
appropriate means to make a determination for selecting a partner; and
yet I have no practical way to quickly target and engage potential
business partners in an exploratory dialogue. |