Every worthy business has a story that should be told. Every television channel in the world should be saturated with stories about good people who create value with creativity, integrity, and graciousness. That's a very special business.
These stories would be the antithesis of the general media's portrayal of business. Every day in every media outlet, our global culture is told stories about exploitive people and exploitive companies of people. In part we begin to believe this is the normative way people live their life.
We need to know more about good people doing good things to make our world a better place.
The Process: Nominate a Business!
With the web, the nomination process is always open because it is online. Then, the final selection process will always be opened – it, too, will also always be online. Let the people choose who should be profiled next! Why not have a show like American Idol for good businesses?
From the open nomination to the open voting, there will be a group in the middle. These are all the small business advocates -- the leaders of local business organizations, economic development groups, CPAs, business editors, business professors... Within a given geography these people really know the heart and soul of the business leaders within their community. These people will take any given list of 100 people and select the best 10. They will also caution us on those businesses that they believe probably should not be listed at all. If enough suggest so, the business is delisted.
Any list that goes up for a given geography will have a rank order for "the next 100 companies" to be considered for an episode of the show in that region. Yet, based on the people who vote, that rank order can change.
With the open nominations, the experts rankings, and the final selection made by the viewing public, this process will be a bit like American Idol, but here we are always looking for the best businesses with the most ethical, creative, and courageous founders and owners.
The list of countries of the world will be indexed and cross-indexed as activities in each country develops.
The Collaborative Countries:
Note: People within these countries have been watching the show since 1995. They receive the show through a local station's re-broadcast of the Voice of America signal. Although the show has extensively aired in China on CCTV and some of the local cable stations, the "G8+ 5" listings are in the next column.
Australia, Bolivia, Gambia, Ghana, Mauritius, Mongolia, New Zealand, Niger, Peru, Poland, United Arab Emirates (Dubai).
The G8 + 5 Countries:
Brazil (5), China (5), France, German, India (5), Italy. Japan, Mexico (5), Russia, South Africa (5), United Kingdom, USA
In Canada the people of Canada tune into the show from the rebroadcasts from Vermont Public Television, Watertown WPBS, Buffalo's WNED, Erie's WQED, Detroit's Public Broadcasting, North Dakota's KFME, and others.
The new focus, opening new doors:
Each of these countries were visited in 2007 and there are people, stations, and actions being to create local episodes of Small Business School and Best Businesses of the World. These countries include: Arab Nations (first draft, a working document), Iceland, Ireland, Norway and Vietnam. |
