While reading the innovation article that inspired the majority of my posts last week, I started to think about the connection between travel and growth in business. It seems inevitable especially in our ever globalized business market. Based on the findings in the innovator study, managers who have been on assignment abroad show about 7% higher market performance when they become CEOs, compared to the CEOs without the international experience.
One of the most powerful experiments innovators can engage in is living and working overseas. Our research revealed that the more countries a person lived in, the more likely he or she is to leverage that experience to deliver innovative products, processes, or business.
I am not a CEO of a major company and I cannot personally recount the truth of these statistics; however I do feel that they are reflective of the benefits of travel. There are plenty of people who tell how travel has affected their lives. There are thousands more people who, despite short vacation time in the US, are dreaming about their next vacation. To some, travel is merely an escape from the rat race, but maybe it can be much more.
Rick Steves argues in his book Travel as a Political Act that travel can help us form our political opinion. By experiencing the way other countries are run firsthand, we can eliminate past prejudices, assumptions, and fears. We can even start to reshape opinions about our own countries. In regards to business, this awareness can reshape the views of a company, as well as the assumptions of the way companies should be run.
Travel can help your professional career in many ways. There is a reason many reporters and researchers go ‘in the field.’ There is invaluable information outside of your cubicle. In this age, where the consumer has loads of products to choose from and thousands of outlets in which they get their information, it is much harder to get your customers to listen. Marketers need to find innovative and unconventional ways to run successful campaigns. Of course traditional advertising can be clever and effective (think of Geico’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’) but just because people remember that Maxwell’s is ‘good to the last drop’ or the McDonald’s catchphrase ‘I’m lovin it,’ doesn’t mean that they will drink Maxwell coffee or eat McDonald burgers.
Not everyone can live by gallivanting outside of the office forever, but when you get the chance it will create lots of opportunities that can spark new ideas and revitalize your career.
Image via: antwerpenR
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