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Happy Friday. Click This. Going Global.

Going GlobalHappy Friday! This week we’ve curated a selection of links about going global. Whether your company is a start-up or an established enterprise heavyweight (or you just want to know how to make some amazing global sandwiches), we hope you enjoy the items below. Gobble it all up now, or save some for the weekend!

If you sell physical products abroad, you’ve already considered how to best adjust prices to meet the needs (and demands) of each local market. But what if you sell virtual products? Joey Conway, creator and owner of Android app Root Checker Pro, and Catherine Tucker, Associate Professor of Management Science at MIT Sloan, recently shared their findings from an experiment conducted over six months selling apps in six different countries. The bottom line? Don’t put prices on autopilot. Know your local markets for virtual products just as well as you do for physical products.

In his 2012 TED Talk, Robert Neuwirth, author of Stealth of Nations, shares what he learned about “System D”—or the informal economy—while living and studying in Lagos, Nigeria. Neuwirth argues that our focus on the luxury economy distracts us from the vast majority of the world’s population who work in informal economies. He also points to the power of this street market economy, how companies can leverage existing buying and selling behaviors in “System D” to reach emerging markets, and how some companies are using piracy as market research.

India will be the world’s most populous country by 2022, and Nigeria may quickly outpace the U.S., becoming the third most populous country by 2050. What might this mean for your business?

Although Iran has the potential to be a tremendously lucrative market for American tech companies, many companies are waiting for the U.S. to lift sanctions, and—even then—many are still hesitant. Getting money in and out of the country remains difficult, and yet being the first to the market may prove to be invaluable. Aside from tech, Iran also has the potential to be a promising market for energy, aviation, consumer goods, and auto industries. However, as international corporations and entrepreneurs alike are discovering in the case of Myanmar, going global in an area that has been isolated for decades presents new challenges such as market sophistication and consumer literacy.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, Google’s Project Loon is slated to use balloons to bring Internet access to the country, widening yet another new market. Which apps will be most popular in Sri Lanka next year?

Google’s Project Loon

(via TechCrunch)

We’d love to hear your responses to these questions (and more) in our comments section!

P.S. If you want to learn more about the world this weekend (without even leaving your home), check out these documentaries: Life in a Day from National Geographic; Babies from Focus Features; and (for fun!) The Search for General Tso.

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