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First-hand insight into U.S. markets
AmCham delegations offer an opportunity to learn about the American culture and ways of thinking and doing business, as well as to visit world-renowned corporations that are setting the trends in their respective industries.
Do you have a product or service and would like to test its potential in the American market? Would you like to get a bigger picture of the trends in particular industries? Join our next delegation!
Business delegations are a good fit for Slovenian companies that have an excellent, innovative, specific product, service, or technology, and the desire, know-how, determination, and resources to try to make an entrance in the U.S. market. A business delegation facilitates meetings with business people, developers, city representatives, entrepreneurs, and visits to trade fairs and B2B meetings.
The purpose of a development delegation is get familiar with the latest trends in the business world — from technologies and business models to new market rules.
A business development delegation is a “something-for-everyone” mix and offers both a visit to a trade fair and visits to companies, as well as meetings with city representatives, entrepreneurs, and business communities.
This year, we again headed off to Dallas, Texas, with the business delegation, where we were part of the continuation of last year’s success story of Texas Feels Slovenia, a business-investment conference, and a Slovenian tourism workshop.
At the conference, Slovenia presented itself as an excellent business partner, a country of investment opportunities, and a sustainable tourist destination with unique experiences. On Friday, April 7, 2023, 24 members of the AmCham business delegation visited leading local companies in the field of information and communication technologies, digitalization, advanced marketing solutions, and services, as well as branding, security, and energy efficiency – Dallas Mavericks, Dallas Cowboys World HQ, Nokia Executive Experience Center Dallas, The Point Group and Cisco Allen Data Center. They met their executives and managers and learned about the latest trends in the mentioned fields. Slovenia experienced the peak of promotion in the evening at the “I Feel Slovenia Night” – a basketball match between the Dallas Mavericks and the Chicago Bulls.
The delegation traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada, the state of the Fun Economy, where we explored its innovative spirit & attractions in the fields of green transformation, digitization, and new business models, as Nevada is known for many industries such as IT, logistics, aviation, energy, healthcare, gambling, breakthrough technologies, etc. We visited organizations dealing with databases and the development of smart cities: Black Fire Innovation, Switch Las Vegas, The Boring Company, UNLV, and Conventional Center Las Vegas …
The program included a visit to the most important technology fair in the world CES (Consumer Technology Association), where as many as 3,900 exhibitors from all over the world exhibit.
Members of the delegation explored business opportunities that Houston, Austin, and Dallas offer. Texas is becoming one of the centers of technological development, innovative methods and disruptive business models. This time we visited NASA Space Center, IBM Global Solution Center, Urban Mining Company, Strangeworks, Texas State Capitol, Sun to Water Technologies, and Dallas Cowboys.
Our trip was also remarkable because of the business conference “Texas Feels Slovenia”, which was an exceptional promotion of the Slovenian economy in Dallas. The entire conference was held in the spirit of basketball and the outstanding basketball player Luka Dončić, as he is the reason why Slovenia has a door wide-open in Texas. After the conference, delegation members cheered for him in a match between the Dallas Mavericks and Portland Trail Blazers.
Renewable energy sources, high technology, space technology, and sports were the common threads of this business development delegation, which visited the state of Texas in March 2020.
Go Big in Texas, as the delegation was called, opened doors for participants to the NASA Johnson Space Center and the superb Station Houston accelerator. They also met with an active astronaut of Slovenian descent, Randy “Komrade” Bresnik. The highlight of the visit to Dallas was meeting the management of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, who voiced their desire for closer economic links with Slovenia, mostly thanks to the team’s star player Luka Dončić.
The focus of this year’s delegation was space, new technologies, and robotics.
The “Future Fit” development delegation travelled to Washington D.C., where it visited companies like Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Space X and met with senior U.S. officials from the US Chamber of Commerce.
CES, one of the largest fairs of modern consumer electronics in the world, was the main focus of the Las Vegas visit.
The common thread tying together this trip to the U.S. was customer centricity.
The delegation visited the Summer Fancy Food Show, one of the biggest food fairs in North America, as well as corporations with a global influence on digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and investment flows. We visited Microsoft, SAP Leonardo Center, Celtra, the IBM Watson Center and At Kearney.
“We met the future!” is what we could say about this trip to the USA. We visited the headquarters of innovative global corporations in Boston and Pittsburgh —
namely BCG, IBM, and Celtra — and world-renowned universities including Harvard, MIT and Carnegie Mellon.
This business delegation to two states, Illinois and Minnesota, created opportunities for new business partnerships with an emphasis on the aviation industry, healthcare, and joint efforts with development agencies in American cities. We made a visit to Boeing’s headquarters, the famous Mayo Clinic and the headquarters of 3M.
The Slovenian Silicon Valley Tour! is the best way to describe this trip to the USA.
We visited:IBM Executive Briefing Center, Cisco, HPE, Nasa Ames Research Center, BCG Digital Ventures Center, Microsoft, Salesforce, Uber, Celtra, Tesla, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google. Furthermore, we toured Stanford University and witnessed the opening of the first European accelerator ABC Global Home. A part of the business development delegation was led by the Deputy Prime Minister of Slovenia, Boris Koprivnikar.
Business managers and the Government of the RS jointly visited IT companies. “Green Reference Country in Digital Europe” was the slogan of the business delegation that toured the biggest IT companies: IBM, CISCO, EMC, HP, and Microsoft. The delegation of Slovenian companies was accompanied by the Slovenian Prime Minister, Miro Cerar, and Minister of Public Administration, Boris Koprivnikar, who met with the leaders of these companies at their seats.
The business delegation focused on the key sectors in the State of Colorado, collaboration with city development offices, and attending World Trade Day, which is held annually by WTC Denver, drawing more than a thousand participating companies from various industries.
The first AmCham-led business delegation visited the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Cleveland, we were hosted by the city’s mayor, the accelerator’s director and the head of the development agency. Participants had the chance to visit the headquarters of the famous rubber processing company Goodyear in Akron and to meet the city’s mayor and his team. Formerly a steel town, Pittsburgh is transforming into a city where companies on the cutting edge of robotics and new technologies are taking the lead.
For all questions related to international cooperation, please reach out to Vida Dolenc Pogačnik, our COO and International Cooperation Leader.
Vida Dolenc Pogačnik
COO and International Cooperation Leader
