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12 Foreign Expansion Questions Every Business Leader Should Ask

How do you expand your company in a new country? Our new Guide to Foreign Business Expansion helps answer 12 big questions for all business leaders.

It isn’t every day that you take your business international. While many business owners or founders have hard-earned experience with the core elements of building a successful business – hiring, finance, marketing, etc. – it’s hard to gain experience with expanding a business into a new country until you have to actually do it.

Where do you start? What questions should you ask? How should you evaluate potential new locations? Isn’t there a cheat sheet that can make your life easier?

Yes, there is.

Drawing on Waterloo EDC’s experiences with helping companies land and expand in our community, we’ve developed a long-form Q&A booklet that helps answer key questions every business leader should ask before they expand their business into a new country.

The booklet is called “Guide to Foreign Business Expansion: 12 Questions Every Business Leader Needs to Ask” and it’s free to download – in full – right now. We’ll publish one chapter of the booklet at a time right here on our blog and, as we publish, we’ll update this page with a link to the new chapter (so bookmark this page now!).

No matter whether you choose to expand in Waterloo or somewhere else, we hope that this resource is helpful in guiding you and your business through this exciting process. Oh, and we’re always happy to help – just contact us at your convenience.

Here are the 12 foreign expansion questions every business leader should ask:

  1. Why should I expand my company to a new location?
  2. What are the different types of business expansion? Which type fits my company’s needs?
  3. How do I find an expansion location for my company?
  4. How should I evaluate an ecosystem?
  5. What are location advantages and how can they help my company?
  6. What kinds of cost advantages can my company benefit from?
  7. How do I identify a strong pipeline of relevant talent?
  8. How do I evaluate a community’s existing workforce?
  9. What kind of office/industrial space does my company need?
  10. What kind of government dynamics should I expect?
  11. What does the tax code look like in potential new locations?
  12. Have other companies expanded to this location? What was their experience like?
Are you looking to expand your business?

Do you want to learn more about Waterloo? Contact the Waterloo EDC team! We’re here to help.

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