Amy Karam
Speaker, Amy Karam
Business, politics and innovation are intertwined as never before.
As a speaker, author, commentator and educator, Amy Karam equips companies and governments with insights and strategies to successfully navigate challenging global trade dynamics and a new kind of competition from China and other emerging nations.
Amy Karam is the author of The China Factor: Leveraging Emerging Business Strategies to Compete, Grow and Win in the New Global Economy (Wiley) and a Global Expansion and Competitive Strategy consultant. She equips organizations with strategies and tactics to navigate the new global geopolitical-business dynamics and is a professional instructor for Stanford and Duke University, as well as conducting her own workshops, as founder of the Global Business Innovation Academy.
Karam is a keynote speaker on global trade and innovation and her TEDx talk addresses the China challenges of today as offers solutions. She shares her 15 years of Silicon Valley experience and extensive international expertise having worked with 50+ countries on all continents. She was also the lead of a CEO-sponsored global competitive sales support program at Cisco Systems where she defended and won up to $1 billion in revenues per year in deals competing with Huawei. As a fellow for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, she shares with thought leadership with a perspective on how public policy and private sector can collaborate to enable global competitiveness.
Why China?
Why China?
Amy has been tracking Huawei and other Chinese players for over a decade, stemming from when she was tapped to lead a CEO-sponsored competitive intelligence and sales support program at Cisco Systems. She strategized with sales teams worldwide on how to compete to win when challenged by Huawei, a growing competitor, and advised executive management on organizational changes needed to adapt and address the shifting global business dynamics, especially in Emerging Markets.
Discovering that Huawei and other Chinese companies play with a different rule book than the West, she realized this was not a blip but a fundamental shift in global business practices. She wrote The China Factor and began her career in equipping Western companies with the ‘Cultural IQ’ knowledge of how Chinese and other emerging countries do business and advising them on strategies to change their game for success when doing business globally and how to become innovative at innovation.
The West needs to work on being ‘better’ in innovation and not remain static at being ‘the best’ in order to stay ahead – others are catching up fast.
Emerging Markets is Now
Emerging Markets is Now
Amy’s interest in emerging markets began in the 1990s, leading her to her International MBA studies, which included a case competition on Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty and her thesis on the untapped economic potential of emerging markets, summarized in the triangle theory of opportunity for the Western private sector, international development banks and socio-economic development goals of emerging countries.
Her parallel interest and focus in the high-tech industry amplified her vision of the future where wireless mobility would dominate and propel prosperity in a plethora of dimensions.
The importance of emerging markets in the growth of the global economy is no longer a novelty but a necessity. Companies and countries worldwide need to better understand EMs as customers and competitors.
Amy Karam has dedicated her career to sharing this know-how as a keynote speaker and workshop leader worldwide to guide organizations in adapting for future success in this new world order.
Engaging & Dynamic Speaker
Engaging & Dynamic Speaker
AMY KARAM is a trusted authority on globalization, innovation, competitive strategy, the shifting power dynamics in international business, and the geo-political impact of China’s rise as well as other emerging nations.
With a dynamic, engaging and unique presentation style, she combines humor, wit and hard truths to create an effective and lasting impression on the audience. She has engaged thousands of leaders and sales professionals worldwide.
She speaks on the change that companies need to make in order to survive and thrive in these rapidly evolving global competitive dynamics with a new kind of competition that plays by different rules. How to maintain and grow a company’s innovation advantage, the impact of a cultural IQ on your ROI and the shift in the approach and mindset of sales and strategy professionals are critical to success in this new global economy.
Drawing on her 15 years of Silicon Valley experience, and extensive 20+ years of international expertise in high-tech and other industries (she’s worked with over 50+ countries in Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa) she advises C-suite executives and guides execution-level management in creating focused, innovative, global expansion strategies.
Amy has been published in magazines such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Hill Times and China’s Business Tianjin; has been interviewed by Yahoo Finance, Google, CTV News; and has spoken at companies and conferences around the world. Her TEDx Talk highlights her perspectives on global trade and competitiveness, the need to adapt to the power shift and maintain an Innovation Advantage.
