Only 4 percent of the world’s consumers live in the United States, and a new initiative from the University of Iowa wants to do more to help small businesses in Iowa reach the other 96.
The Institute for International Business (IIB) in the UI Tippie College of Business has expanded its role to become an outreach arm of the university to help small and medium-sized businesses throughout Iowa expand their markets overseas. At the same time, the IIB will continue to give undergraduates hands-on business experience.
“The goal is to use the resources of the University of Iowa to help Iowa businesses expand globally,” says Dimy Doresca, the new director of the IIB. “Many of these businesses don’t have the resources on their own to consider expanding internationally, so we can be their international development arm.”
Iowa businesses are no stranger to global trade, and many might be surprised to learn that it’s more than just Deere & Co. or Rockwell Collins, firms that do enormous amounts of their business overseas. Doresca cites a U.S. Department of Commerce report that says in 2012, more than 3,300 businesses in Iowa exported their products and services, and more than 2,700 of them were actually small businesses, or those classified as having 50 employees or fewer.
Although he grew up in Haiti, Dimy Doresca has a strong connection to Iowa.
His first home in the United States was in Bettendorf, where he lived while attending Scott Community College as an exchange student under the auspices of USAID and Georgetown University. He earned his AA from Scott, his BA from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and went on to earn his MS in Foreign Service (International Relations) from Georgetown.
He worked for a number of nongovernmental organizations, international development organizations, and investment banks in the ensuing years, in the United States and Haiti.
He returned to Iowa in 2005 to work for Stanley Consultants, Inc. in Muscatine. He was part of the firm’s team that set up its first field operations in India, and then worked on projects throughout the Middle East in places like Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. He started working for UI as an adjunct instructor in 2012, teaching international business classes at the Tippie School of Business’ part-time MBA-PM program in Davenport and Des Moines. He plans to continue teaching in his new position.
He also continues to do consulting work with Haiti’s Ministry of Economic Development and brings teams of Iowa business owners on trade missions to his home island every year.
He says the Iowa companies most active in global trade were those that sold medical equipment, and information technology and business services. But the market has plenty of room for more.
“I’ve heard from a lot of businesses that have the same story, that they want to get into international business and don’t know where to start, or they’re in it, but they’re facing a lot of risk and don’t how to mitigate it,” he says. “We have the resources to help.”
Doresca is spending the fall semester traveling the state and working with the Iowa Association of Business and Industry to find three or four small businesses that want to go global. In the spring, he’ll put together teams of undergraduate Tippie College of Business students to work as consultants, earning class credit while compiling research reports that give those clients the data and background they’ll need to make an informed decision.
He says the institute will expand to provide help to even more businesses once the first group is up and running.
“This will be an incredible experiential learning opportunity for our students to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it in a real world setting,” says Doresca, who notes that he will work closely with the teams to guide their work.
He’ll visit Iowa business and civic groups to extol the virtues of international business. While it can be daunting for a small business to enter international markets, he says the payoff is worth the effort. Vast resources are available to help them, from the federal Small Business Association and Export Assistance Center to the state of Iowa’s Department of Economic Development that can help guide the small business owner to new markets.
He sees the IIB’s role as providing research to those business owners on things like regional and global markets, the risks of expanding into those markets, and how to mitigate them, whether it’s worth expanding, and if so, how best to do it.
“We want to bring awareness to the opportunities and let Iowa companies know they have a resource here at the University of Iowa to expand globally, while also helping to train UI students,” he says.