New social media trend: micro-multinationals

Social media are helping to create a new kind of enterprise: micro-multinational companies. They're small, Web-wired startups that are using social media to spot -- and then grab -- the best new talent from around the globe and leverage it for innovation and sustainability.

"Immigration today, thanks to the Web, means something very diffierent than it used to mean," says Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google and a professor of information economics at UC-Berkeley. "There's no longer a brain drain but brain circulation. People now doing startups understand what opportunities are available to them around the world and work to harness it from a distance rather than move people from one place to another."

Not convinced? Consider SlideShare, a six-person multinational company whose entire staff consists of a couple of employees in the States, a few in Eastern Europe and one in Asia. Or take Viewdle, an image-tagging start-up, which has four people in California, three in Kiev and two in Uruguay. Viewdle Founder and CEOLaurent Gil, a French citizen, told Milken Global Conference attendees that his firm invented the start-up's video tagging technology in the Ukraine, found capital to fund the company in Los Angeles, "and Uruguay was a great place to find engineers," he said. "The fact we are a micro-multinational was by design. In a small company like ours, we survive and we grow because we have the ability to identify, and then employ from the best pockets of knowledge around the globe."

Varian says micro-multinationals are, in a majority of cases, companies that have been founded by U.S. immigrants using their trusted social networks at American universities and abroad to source the talent they need. Micro-multinationals also tend to be led by executives who are very willing to travel long distances in a heartbeat and to "stay up late using voice-over-Internet technology to engage in work activity across a range of time zones -- unlike at many larger, traditional multinational firms." Added Varian: "I think that in many ways, the micro-multinationals have it easier than the big ones."

Varian says younger workers tend to have a greater ability to use social media and digital Web technologies to supervise, communicate and manage employees at a distance. And while it's still difficult to build teams out of small, far-flung groups, the cost-savings outweigh the challenges, Varian says."Micro-multinational leaders are entrepreneurs who are hungry to get their businesses to succeed and they have extensive social networks, so finding people to work for the company -- top global talent -- is a lot easier and effective than hiring an international recruiting firm," he said.

Are you a micro-multinationalist? Please share your experiences recruiting talent for it.