I was checking out of the 4 room Kennett House Bed and Breakfast in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, population 5792, when I was stopped to thank Gilja Kusano, the owner and proprietor.  Gilja is a petite lady of Japanese-Korean descent who was marvelous in her hospitality during my brief business trip.  As we stood there by the front door, suitcase at my feet, she began to ask me questions that really got my mind spinning.

She had moved from California to Pennsylvania to begin this business a couple of years earlier.  When she found out about my work in consulting around the country and about my background of being born and raised in Japan, she launched into a whole series of questions:

• Are we in a recession?  How long will the economic challenges last?
• What has happened to the U.S. automotive industry and why can’t they compete with the Koreans and the Japanese?
• What is going to happen in energy?
• What about transportation?  People don’t seem to drive or fly as much, which impacts her business?
• What is going on with her local clients?  They don’t seem to be bringing in colleagues and clients to the U.S. as much.  Will this change?
• What should she do differently in terms of marketing?  She was thinking about creating packages for Europeans to come to Kennett Square.
• Why do the Japanese and other international companies have higher standards of excellence in their offerings?

This went on for at least a half hour.  And we could have spent half a day discussing these issues.

As I listened to this Japanese-Korean female owner of a four bedroom B&B in a town of 5792 people thinking deeply and broadly about the global economy and trying to develop business strategies that considered these trends and forces, it struck me that she was a powerful example of the fact that today no business is “local.”  Instead, all business is “glocal.”  If you own a local business, danger can come at you from the other side of the world.  But if you are alert to the world, then your next opportunity may also come, not from the neighborhood, but from the other side of the global village.