Welcome to a momentous occasion:
An insider’s view to SME Beyond Borders #RethinkSuccess
In this full-length memento profile of SME Beyond Borders #RethinkSuccess, let’s begin by setting the scene and clarifying exactly what the Beyond Borders occasion was created to do. Many people misunderstand what our giant year-end event is all about, and that’s quite understandable. It would be easy to suppose that because SME Advisor creates a wide variety of events throughout the year, including the Vision round tables and the Success Series one-day conferences, the big yearend event (which used to be called the ‘Summit’) is simply a bigger and better version, with glamorous speakers and a full-length agenda. Yet in fact that it isn’t the motivation at all, The SME Beyond Borders event was created to address a particular key theme each year and to be able to do so in rich detail, offering real analysis and bringing forward a lot of primary, unpublished data, presented by speakers of unrivalled quality and innovation. It aims to be a ground-breaking occasion that looks at the leading players - and their environments - in a particular thread or sector of the international SME galaxy. In a one-day format, it brings together the key debates and strategies
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underlying exceptional SME performance and shows how today’s complex economies bring challenges, change - and immense opportunity. So, for example, last year, SME Beyond Borders focused on the idea of the West-East Corridor – the collaborative community of developing nations spreading from Indonesia to Namibia and offering superb potential for cross-border trade, finance and collaboration. Now, this year, the idea throughout the event is the power to ‘Rethink Success’ - the concept here is that the old CAPEX models of business growth are rapidly becoming redundant and entrepreneurs are making millions from radical new approaches empowered by technology and a disruptive approach to conventional commercial templates. Some of the people using these new methodologies are social entrepreneurs, others world-class technocrats, others young business graduates. The fact is that all of them are doing things in a way that is so compelling, so successful and so plain disruptive - that we either learn the lessons or get left behind. Throughout the day, this year’s SME Beyond Borders asks regional SMEs a series of powerful questions. Can your
business ride the tide of change and deliver • Global standards of innovation and product offer? • First-class technology solutions? • A commercial template that leverages the new ability to create a business infrastructure without excessive upfront costs? • A disruptive business model that subverts competitors by turning the playing-field upside-down? SME Beyond Borders examines what it takes to stand out from the crowd and deliver exceptional results. It takes a worldwide snapshot of top performing entrepreneurs who each have businesses protocols and criteria dramatically different from the norm - and it translates their experience and expertise into practical strategies that your business can adopt right now. Four sessions - and four catalysts to #RethinkSuccess This year’s event is structured across four sessions that each tackle a different aspect of the SME experience as businesses endeavour to embrace changing times, technologies and business models.
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