According to Dr. Robert Hisrich, entrepreneurs can help make the world go round – especially if they look at the world beyond their borders.

“People who think globally tend to be more open-minded and creative, that is the heartbeat of entrepreneurs,” says Hisrich, Garvin Chair for Global Entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management graduate school.  “Not only do we have these global thinkers here at Thunderbird, but we have people who really aspire to be their own boss and create companies in both the profit and non-profit sectors. It’s just a wonderful environment … to create a center and programs here.”

The newest program is the Thunderbird School of Global Management Center for Global Entrepreneurship (CGE). Hisrich is the director of the center and architect of the programming.

Thunderbird is regarded as the world’s leading institution in the education of global managers. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona and with operations in the United States, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Mexico, Central and South America and China, Thunderbird is unique in its commitment to producing global leaders who contribute to sustainable prosperity.

Ranked No. 1 in international business by The Wall Street Journal’s poll of corporate recruiters, U.S. News and World Report, and the Financial Times, Thunderbird’s unique curriculum is based on the principle that to do business on a global scale, executives must know not only the intricacies of business, but also understand the customs of other countries and be able to communicate in different cultures.

The center began operations in 2005, funded by a $60 million gift from businessman and Thunderbird alumnus Samuel Garvin. The goal was to build an entrepreneurship component throughout the curriculum and to establish a world-class center for global entrepreneurship. “The president recognized that a large portion of our alumni were entrepreneurs and that our students wanted a strong entrepreneurship program,” says Hisrich, who also sits on the faculty of the University of Ljubljiana (Slovenia), The Technical University of Vienna and Queensland University of technology in Australia, and has authored numerous books on business and entrepreneurship. “The latest survey of our alumni, done a couple of months ago, shows that 37% of our alumni are entrepreneurs, which is probably higher than any university I know of in the world.”

The program has four areas of focus, organized into centers for excellence — the Global Family Enterprise Center, the Global Center for Innovation and Creativity and Corporate Venturing, the Global Social Enterprise Center and the Global Venture Center.  Each center has a three-pronged thrust of an academic component, a theoretical/research component and a supply and implementation component.

“Every student has to take the Global Enterprise course,” says Hisrich. “Basically this is an introduction to entrepreneurship. They learn all about what an entrepreneur is and what a global enterprise is and how to do these things on an ethically- and socially-conscious basis.”

In addition to Global Enterprise, the entrepreneurship curriculum includes the Global Business Plan course, which covers everything from coming up with the opportunity to developing the business plan to launching the business. Managing the Global Family Business addresses the concerns of family-owned businesses, which constitute 82% of all businesses in the world. Other courses cover financing the business, valuing the business, and growing the business. All of these courses have a global perspective.

The center also sponsors various non-credit courses, including seminars and workshops like the Global Family Enterprise Program held in the early spring. “Family businesses from all over the world, this year including Europe, India, China, Mexico and the United States, come and have this three-day experience,” Hisrich explains.  “They get to know each other and, hopefully, there’s some business done between them. We present seminars and it is led by Ernesto Poza, who has the leading selling book in family-business and is on our staff. We also do the Global Family Business conference in China. We do a two-day version of the four-day program.”

Other seminars include “Global Entrepreneurship: Starting Your New Venture.” It’s a one-day intensive course designed for business people leaving the corporate world and starting their own firms. “We also have a two-day seminar on corporate innovation and intra-preneurship,” says Hisrich. “We have companies from all over the country come to participate. They learn how to actually create new businesses within businesses and create new products.”

Also under Innovation and Creativity, he adds, “We have the Innovation Challenge in the fall, where teams come from all over the world to compete for a first prize of $20,000. The first round of competition is online and we have an international group of judges to judge the contest. Out of the second round, ten teams are selected and paid to come here to Arizona for the final round. We should call it the sustainable Innovation Challenge because the questions are ones the corporate sponsors pose. Last year’s sponsors were very pleased with the responses they got to questions of importance to them.”

The Social Entrepreneurship Center focuses on creating socially responsible organizations. “People who tend to think globally are unusual in that they really have a sense of social enterprise and social fairness. In general, according to studies I’ve done, entrepreneurs are more ethical than managers. Obviously because it’s their company and a lot of times their name is on the company,” Hisrich remarks. “We have quite an interest in social entrepreneurship, we will be offering a credit course in social entrepreneurship this year. We also have projects looking at sustainable innovation. Incoming students are put into teams and look at ways we can become a carbon-neutral campus. The winning idea is funded and the winning team gets a prize. I think last year it was $2,000.”

The center seeks to advance entrepreneurship worldwide and help create and support prosperity. “We have a program on Afghan women,” Hisrich says. The program is part of the Global Venture Center‘s global women entrepreneurs initiative. “We bring over women entrepreneurs from Afghanistan for about three weeks. We give them training on various aspects of doing business and entrepreneurship, and help them create and grow their businesses in a country where it is most difficult not only to just be an entrepreneur, but to be a female entrepreneur.”

The structure and thrust of the program reflects Hisrich’s views on the future of global economic development. “I think that part of the building of [Afghanistan], along with other countries that are moving through economic development, it’s going to be the women. These women are just unbelievable,” he says. “We’re in the process of expanding that program, we’re in negotiation with a major US corporation for funding. Eventually we’re going to expand it to [take it to] women in other countries, we’re looking at a couple of places in Africa.”

Not only does the center train global entrepreneurs, it puts its money where its mouth is and helps new companies get started through its global business incubator, part of the Global Venture Center. The incubator structure and the relationship with the school represent a new direction in university financing. According to Hisrich, it is an idea whose time has come. “We have a different concept than most incubators. If you look at the future of universities, we really ought to have a different model. I think the model of funding education as it exists today is just not sustainable into the future,” he says. “Universities today depend upon endowments, in other words giving from alumni, student tuitions and any research dollars they get from corporate or government resources. We believe we should take a proactive position in forming companies and also a risk as well. Instead of charging rent, we take an equity position in the companies in our incubator.”

Because the Center has a vested interest in the success of the incubator enterprises, it gives the fledgling companies a wealth of support and guidance. Incubator companies are assigned a faculty mentor, an alumni entrepreneur mentor and an Enterprise Scholar, who assists them while learning to run a business from the inside. They also have access to a wealth of business services support from the program.

Throughout its 60-year history, Thunderbird has remained a leader in international business education by offering a cutting-edge curriculum taught by faculty who are recognized as global thought leaders. The new Center for Global Entrepreneurship is handily following in that tradition. “My goal is to be the number one program in global entrepreneurship in the world,” says Hisrich.

For 76 years, Detroit’s General Motors Corp. (GM) was the world’s leading seller of automobiles. Then last year, in a photo finish, Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp. emerged as a close number-two, nearly clipping GM’s title. GM sold 9.36 million cars and trucks worldwide last year, only about 3,000 more than Toyota.

What happened to GM isn’t unique. Other industries traditionally dominated by the United States have watched their market share steadily erode to foreign competitors.

Consider Eastman Kodak Co. (Rochester, NY) For much of the 1980s and ‘90s, Kodak was the world’s number-one maker of cameras. But today, Japanese camera makers such as Canon Inc., Sony Corp. and Olympus Corp. have eclipsed Kodak thanks to the growth of digital cameras and Kodak’s slow transformation from film to digital imaging. In the past decade, Kodak lost almost 80% of its market value. In recent years, Kodak has laid off about 28,000 employees and spent nearly $3.4 billion in restructuring. Earlier this year, Kodak executives said they expected to increase sales of digital products, including cameras and printers, to between 10% and 12% annually through 2011, or between $9.8 billion and $10.5 billion.

The competition among personal-computer makers is even tighter. International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) are in a three-way race, not so much against each other but against Asian rivals Acer Inc. and Lenovo Group Ltd. for the top position in the world’s personal-computer market. Both Asian firms are expanding rapidly. Last year, Acer purchased Netherlands-based Packard Bell BV to increase its presence in Europe and Irving, CA-based Gateway Inc. to expand within the U.S. Meanwhile, China-based Lenovo increased its sales in India and Eastern Europe and China, outpacing HP and Dell.

To compete, last year, Dell began selling PCs through retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Best Buy Co., abandoning a long-standing tradition of direct-only sales. Dell also began selling to retailers such as Carerefour SA in Europe and China’s GOME Electrical Appliances. Driven largely by its laptop sales in Asia-Pacific and Japan, Dell’s revenue in the Pacific Rim grew by 41% in its most recent fiscal quarter, the company announced last month.

“Fifteen years ago, the U.S. was seen as the dominant economy in the world. But that has changed,” says A. LaMont Eanes, global vice president of BT Conferencing, a video-conferencing company. “It’s clear, at this point and time, the U.S.  as the dominant position in the world economy is somewhat in doubt. We are competing on a global basis.”

Eanes cites several examples of how 10 years or so ago, companies in various countries banded together in their respective country such as Latin America or Europe to compete against the U.S. Those efforts are now are paying off.

Another reason U.S. companies are now playing catch-up to foreign-based firms is, in large part, due to sheer arrogance, Eanes said. “Detroit [auto makers] did a very poor job of innovating during the 1960’s and 1970s, which was their heyday,” he says. “They continued to turn out basically the same product without concern for quality because there was little competition. Then Honda came out, and then Nissan. They studied the American market and applied principals of quality. Asian companies were better and faster to apply innovation and technology than U.S. companies were. U.S. automakers were caught sleeping and continue to lose market share.”

Domestic Changes

As U.S. businesses expand overseas, there will be greater scrutiny on what happens to jobs stateside. During the recent Democratic presidential race, one of the top issues for candidates was the loss of jobs in the U.S. as corporations not only look for revenue outside of the U.S., but also seek cheaper labor. Both Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY.) proposed ways of re-examining how U.S. businesses can survive. Clinton’s admission that the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which helped U.S. companies employ workers in Mexico and Canada, needs some additional work and may not have been as positive for the U.S. labor market as once thought, was even more startling, considering her husband signed the policy in 1993 as president.

With the weakened U.S. economy on the brink of a recession, domestic companies in danger of losing market share to foreign companies are aggressively expanding to emerging foreign markets including India, China, Russia, and Africa – the same thing foreign companies have been doing for decades in the U.S.

Angel L. Pineiro, a senior operations manager of Citi, the Cincinnati-based global financial services company and one of the nation’s largest financial multinationals, believes as the economy continues to strain, many U.S. companies will reduce their spending on U.S. marketing, advertising, and even business travel and instead focus only on operations that are geared to attracting business and employees outside of the U.S. Foreign companies, he says, will also use the weakened state of the dollar to aggressively invest in the U.S. through mergers and acquisitions.

Pineiro is in a unique position to witness how the economy will impact businesses, particularly from the side of consumer spending. Through Citi’s subsidiary, Citigroup, he oversees Macy’s Department Stores credit card services. Citi also competes with larger banking institutions such as American Express, Bank of America and Wachovia. When consumers fall behind on their credit card bills, or homeowners begin falling behind on their mortgages – especially those involved in the sub-prime mortgage market – or car-owners begin missing their payments, banks such as Citi feel the pinch.

“We’re going to start seeing affects on the bottom line,” Pineiro said. “We’ll have more write-offs for money that we can’t collect.”

Executives from one U.S. based multinational say the near-term future growth has to be foreign markets. For IBM, 63% of its revenue in 2007 came from outside of the U.S., says spokesperson Ian Colley. In fact, in the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, sales in Europe and Asia outpaced domestic sales. IBM is now focusing on meeting its foreign demand. It’s increasing its staff in China, India, Russia, and Brazil, where sales jumped 39% in the first three quarters of 2007. “The fast growth is occurring on a more rapid rate outside of the U.S.,” Colley says, adding that one of the firm’s biggest areas of growth is infrastructures for cell-phone users in India. Telecommunications companies are flocking there because residents are beginning to purchase cell phones nearly as quickly as U.S. residents.

The biggest challenge for multinationals today, Colley says, is changing the corporate mindset that U.S. companies only have to bring their brand to a foreign country to achieve success. That type of insular thinking no longer works in today’s market. “It’s not enough anymore just being a multinational corporation where you set up a copy of yourself in another country,” he says. “You have to establish a global footprint. You have to draw on talent from around the world. And the talent coming out of emerging markets today is very highly skilled.”

In other words, for U.S. multinationals to be successful, American. companies have to become entrenched in their new markets’ cultures rather than just establishing an office there with U.S. born employees and interpreters.

“It’s about global integration,” Colley maintains. “It’s all about integrating your assets around the world, rather than just creating local replicas of yourself. That’s how they will survive.”