This week I had the honor of hearing Dr. Vijay Mahajan speak at the Texas Enterprise Speakers Series about his latest book The Arab World Unbound: Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers. Mahajan spent 3 years of traveling the region and interviewed over 600 local and multinational companies like Coca-cola and Unilever already doing business in the large and growing market. He breaks down stereotypes about the people and culture and demonstrates how globally connected and vibrant the Arab markets are.

The Financial Times says "Prof Mahajan's excitement about the Arab world is almost palpable...he is a fine writer and he presents factual details, statistics and concepts in a breezy, easy to read manner."

This is Mahajan's third book about consumers markets in developing countries. Also check out The 86 Percent Solution: How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the Next 50 Years and Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think.

The C200 is an exclusive membership association of 400 of the world’s most successful women entrepreneurs and corporate leaders representing over 100 industries in the US, Europe, Asia, Canada and Latin America. C200 members employ more that 2.5 million people and generate more than $200 billion in annual revenues. C200 co-sponsors one-day Outreach Seminars for women MBA students. Seminars rotate among the nation's top business schools, and at the seminar they award C200 Scholar Awards to enterprising first year women MBAs enrolled at the hosting school. At the Outreach seminar held in Austin with the University of Texas McCombs School of Business the day was about empowerment and success of women. Lynn Utter the President and COO of Knoll North America served as the keynote speaker and kicked off the program by discussing her work and how she took a big risk with the support of her family to make a major move to Knoll to take on more responsibility and lead an entire organization. The program focused on entrepreneurship, leadership, climbing the corporate ladder, business negotiations, and being a successful women in business. Here are some words of wisdom from the day:

There is nothing wrong with being ambitious
Get an expert to do what you can't
Hire people smarter than you
No matter what the offer, negotiate
Be passionate about what you do
Know more about your company/industry/competitors than anyone else
Reward innovation and the money will follow

My favorite quote of the day was from Gay Gaddis President and CEO of T3. Gay's mother used to tell her that "a kick in the pants is step forward." Thank you ladies for inspiring us all!