What is very interesting at least to me is when you can be personally self-confident that international business is really one of your strengths areas. How many years you need to live abroad, does living in different countries provide the same required experience (living in Sweden vs. Malaysia), days per year travel, living abroad vs. traveling from your home country, expatriate contract vs. relocation on your own, big company vs. small company experience, how transferable is the competence both from regional exposure to changing company and last but not least how much international business competences are industry related vs. functional competence related?
When starting backwards - how much competence is industry related vs. functional related? I think many have opinions for this depending on the background they are coming from. Those who have experience from single industry and especially with engineering mindset tend to highlight industry and product experience over everything else. Even hard boiled manufacturing managers are given international sales/business responsibilities without proper international customer interaction experience when product focus over runs functional competences. Of course this competence is relevant when managing a manufacturing facility but my personal experience is that international marketing and sales management is more related to functional than industry competence. And industry plays actually rather small role - more relevant is the business model or similar customer characteristic.
So how about transferability of international competence from one region to another? For this my personal experience is from Northern Europe and Asia-Pacific. What I have found to be transferable are related to processes and general management - same processes and methods can be implemented across the globe (here I am not talking about theoretical process mgmt. frameworks) as well business and marketing management concepts. Less transferable competence is the interaction with people especially if the cultural differences between countries or regions are considered to be noteworthy. With this interaction I am referring to customers, partners, personnel - all the people one needs to influence, to trust (or not to trust), to understand manners, to negotiate, etc. Someone has said it is always easier to move from more culturally different environment to less different. Sounds common sense.
Big or small company experience. I have personally wondered relevance of experience from big company international main street businesses - how much competence is from surfing with the wave vs. entrepreneurial business development. Surfing with the wave - how in large corporations one can be successful when understands how to manage main street business just as one wheel of a big machine (and enjoying the ride). Gained competence is more internal processes in another environment than living and breathing new business culture. In this case how much of the experience could be utilized in totally different company and environment? Closer to small company experience is the case when one is expanding business to new territories or managing a business venture with a zero or a small revenue base. Then one is exposed to challenges of international business development: capabilities development, finding customers, partners, developing sales model, go-to-market assets, service level assets, etc. One clear benefit of working in bigger companies related to small ones is that you learn much faster the benefits of defined processes and methods - the relevant ones so the business becomes managed in more systematic way... and transferred to new locations.
What is the value of moving to new geography on your own vs. with expatriate contract? This is something I have thought about a lot because of having personal experience - working abroad for a foreign company without any business connections to home country. Afterwards it was easy to summarize that personal moves... well they cause lot of excitement, worries what you cannot even imagine if you have been sent with a contract. First of all you need to show your performance from day one without easy landings and responsibility transfer periods. What is the value of this in years? Most likely some people with contract expatriation experience would argue no difference and I would have my counter arguments - only way to find out is to try both models personally. Someone who has both experiences is very welcome to comment.
One thing is very sure. Living abroad is hard to beat experience comparing to just flying to destinations and then returning always back to home base. It is like continuously tasting a cake time after time but never actually eating it. Useful experience anyway as well and sometimes the first taste is better than the whole cake.
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