International Trade Centre

This is a booklet produced by the International Trade Development Centre and proposes a methodology for developing a national export strategy. It appears to be the work of a committee of representatives from a large number of countries and, somewhat predictably, seems to suffer from lack of central direction. In fact, they are disarmingly frank about this: ...."unfortunately, the result was less than ideal". Also: "The first step in the Balanced Scorecard approach is, of course, to come up with a suitable national export vision. We thought that this would be easy. We were wrong. Strategy teams have a difficult time articulating the national export vision".
the Blanced scorecard is not a bad approach for an individual country ...or an individual industry sector within a country but it's not easy to implement across countries and have a "one size fits all" approach. Almost impossible to achieve this within one country given the different agendas of different; government agencies; regions, industries and the politics which come into play.
It is quite good in setting out a framework and demonstrating how this might be utilised by various countries.....but I suspect very few..if any countries have actually followed the methodology right through. I give it 2 stars… (mehr)

This booklet has been prepared by the International Trade Centre (Geneva) and is a set of guidelines for a sector level export strategy. In this case it is focused on the service sector but most of the recommendations would have wider application. It seems to be very thorough and detailed. So much so that my over-riding criticism of the work is not that it misses something but that it is TOO detailed. By the time one can do all the coordinating between agencies and collect all the data demanded....the opportunity or the business will have changed. Basically, I find the whole thing over-engineered (and I have actually had the experience of developing such a strategy in real life for Australia). I recall discussing some of my reservations about the methodology with the authors at a workshop in Montreaux but they were essentially inflexible..and believed they were right. (I also wondered about the four interlocking cog wheels and wondered if they would just jam unless the teeth were rather sloppily made.....hence...an apt metaphor for over-engineering the strategy). My recollection is that it had never been actually put into practice by any country......maybe that has changed. But hard to fault the idealism exhibited here or its comprehensiveness. If you can do all of this within some sort of realistic time frame...say 12 months....then that's great. And it can serve as a useful memory jogger about organisations that maybe need to be consulted or steps that have been missed etc. And maybe over a longer period...say 5 years.....it might be possible to work on most of the issues suggested. I give it three stars overall because I think it's over-engineered but it would probably warrant 5 stars if it was streamlined to be more practical. Alas I no longer have use for such a guide so it is being discarded in a clean up.… (mehr)

This was a directory pit together by the International Trade Centre (Geneva). It covers some 182 countries plus a number of international and regional organisations. I guess it is a start but when I checked it against Australia...the country that I know best, it was sadly lacking. Basically it just includes Austrade and the various State Chambers of Commerce. In fact, every State Government has their own trade promotion activity and a sizeable organisation backing it up. In addition, there are many industry organisations such as "Wine Australia" which have a role in trade promotion or enforcement of standards for exporting. So, assuming that this applies equally to other countries.....and I had a look at the entry for the USA it it too is lacking in coverage of State based activity or regional groups. I guess the directory is a start for a mailing list of sorts but pretty much a very difficult task to be truly comprehensive and be kept up to date. And certainly the version that I have (2009) is well and truly out of date. So it is being discarded. Two stars from me.… (mehr)