Success Stories: Foreign Direct Investment

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a fiercely competitive industry, where jurisdictions find themselves competing acre-by-acre against neighboring districts, counties, states, provinces, or countries. Here is where I contribute my progressive success in private sector ventures, based upon value proposition sales and marketing; paired with the expanded view of how a large country such as the United States pits itself against other nations to attract the lion’s share of inbound investment.

My work in both private and public sector roles on behalf of local and regional governments has resulted in successful attraction of foreign direct investors. The secret sauce?  Partnerships.

FDI Success with Canada's First Nations Indigenous Business Leaders

My forte is forming strategies for foreign direct investment (FDI) attraction, and one I enjoy speaking about. For numerous years, for the US Department of Commerce SelectUSA program, I organized and spoke at regional venues to attract international entrepreneurs to US communities. 

Taking a unique, region-specific approach to attracting FDI while serving as Principal Commercial Officer in Western Canada, I teamed with a First Nations-owned market development company to tailor speaking engagements that reached Canada First Nations indigenous business leaders, which generated sub-national foreign direct investment success and resulted in a first-ever, First Nations sub-delegation to the Commerce Department’s annual SelectUSA Investment Summit. This facilitated their engagement with economic leaders from the Navajo Nation.

Winning Foreign Direct Investment Strategies

Called upon to organize and host a web-based recruitment outreach event for a US government-hosted FDI event, as commercial officer at the US Embassy in Bucharest I rallied colleagues from nine area countries for an online program to recruit delegates for an annual Foreign Direct Investment summit. I called upon my proven success in “Management by Permission” (i.e., the gentle art of directing another supervisor’s staff members) and my skills in convening and uniting people from disparate cultures and histories.

This program yielded what became the largest-ever delegation from our region to attend the annual event, and it is now a template for low-cost, web-based outreach serving multiple industry sectors.

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Tom Hanson
Your Channel Architect
thanson@channelarchitect.world