Global Business Catalyst Programme

The Global Trade Professionals Alliance (GTPA) is a global trade organisation dedicated to the development of international standards to harmonise and facilitate inclusive and trusted trade.

Our solution addresses the need to accelerate the incorporation of micro, medium and small sized businesses (MSMEs) into global value chains and helps them upskill and succeed internationally through digital capability development and experiential learning.

It assists international trading businesses to assess and diagnose their capability gaps, access up-skilling solutions, be internationally recognised as capable and trusted traders, and join global business support networks.

Partnering with edtech scaleup Practera, our solutions are digitally delivered and foster knowledge acquisition through experiential learning and simulations, an innovative approach tailored to the practical world of international trade.

Scaled globally, we can provide MSMEs worldwide the tools they need to leverage international markets for economic recovery and future growth as the world moves past the Covid-19 pandemic.

International trade is the best vehicle for growth and prosperity for businesses around the world, but success does not come easily; it requires access to appropriate skills, knowledge and networks.

New/small businesses face the biggest challenges in successfully engaging in international trade, despite the fact that over 95% of all firms in most countries are MSMEs. In the OECD for example, only 10-25% of SMEs engage in export, compared to 90% of large industrial firms.

New opportunities are emerging for smaller businesses through increasing access to global value chains (GVCs) and the digital economy. Around 50% of global trade today occurs within GVCs, which are complex networks of products, services and intellectual property spanning multiple geographies. 

Our solutions help MSMEs assess their current capabilities and identify skills gaps and assists them to acquire the necessary knowledge and capabilities to successfully navigate the international trading environment. They also allow MSMEs to become recognised as competent actors in trade, helping provide the certainty required by potential business partners and unlocking opportunities such as those presented by GVCs. 

Our solutions have the potential to make a significant contribution to MSME participation in international trade, ensuring it becomes more innovative, sustainable, and inclusive.

Our solution offers a technology-assisted platform for trade skills assessment and capacity development in an experiential learning environment.

It provides insight into a business’ current trade skills, identifies knowledge and capacity gaps, identifies pathways toward bridging these gaps through experiential learning simulations, and recognises trade competency through certification schemes.

Our skills development program consists of the following elements:

• Trade skills competency assessment aligned to globally recognised ISO/IEC 17024 standards;
• Trade capability mentoring via structured and personalised digital support from GTPA coaches to help execute practical work and learning strategies;
• Business skills assessment and capacity building via the Global Business Diagnostic Tool and eCommerce Diagnostic Tool;
• Trade skills knowledge development through a repository of best practice information and links aligned to desired competency areas;
• Practical trade skills development through case study business simulations delivered as a differentiated and engaging 40-hour virtual learning experience;
• Trade professional credentialing through ISO/IEC 17024 certification;
• Continuous professional development pathways to develop personalised and self-directed plans for the learner to move forward on their skills development journey.

GTPA has partnered with Australian edtech scaleup Practera as its learning design partner to provide its core platform and to deliver a differentiated, modern and experiential learning-led user experience.

Our solutions serve individuals and businesses engaged or seeking to engage in international trade, regardless of geography or demographic.

They cater to all experience levels, from individuals and businesses just starting out on their international journey to those who are recognised experts in their field. Participants are assessed according to their experience level.

We are working to positively impact the lives and livelihoods of business professionals by promoting their participation in international trade and providing access to the tools needed to upskill and take advantage of international growth opportunities.

As an organisation, the GTPA was founded by an experienced leader in international trade with a background in skills development and business success recognition. Our leadership team and network of external experts is similarly experienced. 

We continuously engage with professionals and businesses in trade on an individual basis as well as through industry associations and international organisations. We regularly work with multilateral bodies such as the UN, WTO and APEC to advance and contribute to initiatives that assist MSMEs engaging in trade.

Our collective experience and ongoing engagement with businesses at the individual and multilateral levels ensures our solutions best fill the gaps in trade competency building and skills recognition. 

The GTPA’s solutions support the creation of good jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities by supporting individuals and emerging businesses to (1) attain the skills necessary to successfully engage in international trade, (2) have their competency in trade internationally recognised, and (3) reach international business and support networks. 

As the Challenge notes, only businesses equipped with appropriate skills, resources and networks will be able to access the opportunities created by transformations in the global economy. Skills must be matched to employer demand or be sufficient to allow workers to start their own business. Our solutions facilitate the trade skills development process.

GTPA’s solution assists international trading businesses to assess and diagnose their capability gaps, access up-skilling solutions, be internationally recognised as capable and trusted traders and join global business support networks.

Our solution takes an innovative experiential learning approach to skills development based on real world business simulation. We surround this with trade capability mentoring, best practice knowledge sharing, competency recognition and further pathways to facilitate continuous professional development.

Powered by Practera’s learning platform, participants engage in a relevant, immersive and facilitated learning environment and become part of the GTPA ecosystem where they are able to network and access any additional support required to successfully engage in international trade. 

Competing skills development providers are typically more limited in their approach and lack the surrounding ecosystem of support and networks included in GTPA solutions. Our competency recognition schemes are uniquely backed by internationally recognised ISO/IEC standards and are international in focus, whereas competing recognition schemes tend to be private initiatives and limited to a national focus. 

With our holistic approach to experiential trade skills development, competency recognition and access to networks and continuous professional development, we offer an innovative and differentiated solution to helping businesses and professionals access the tools they need to be successful in international trade.

The solution is powered by Practera, an award-winning experiential learning and skills credentialing platform developed by an Australian edtech scaleup.

Practera assists education providers structure and deploy practical experiential learning programs that help learners upskill and reskill in the flow of work. Practera is specifically designed to support programs such as applied projects, skills credentialing, simulations, mentoring and innovation accelerators. Key to the platform’s capability are:

• Robust experiential learning templates and authoring tools for rapid program customization;
• Simple, mobile first, engaging workflow and feedback apps aligned to adult experiential learning principles;
• A patent pending AI system to better spot and manage challenges & issues in experiential learning at a personalized level;
• Data privacy & anonymization exchange.

Practera has received a number of Australian Federal and State Government R&D grants and is actively commercializing technology from Government and University research centers. In the US, Practera is the key enabling technology for a prestigious National Science Foundation research program into online experiential learning led by Northeastern University.

The combination of GTPA trade content, knowledge, skills assessment frameworks and mentoring capacity with the Practera platform enables a uniquely scalable and practical solution for MSME’s globally.

Practera is a proven technology solution in an early stage, but a globally recognised leader in a rapidly emerging category of experiential learning management systems. To date, Practera has been deployed in the Higher Education space connecting students and industry in experiential learning programs. GTPA is a leading adopter of Practera for the MSME learner market.   

Through our technology and programs, Practera has helped leading Universities improve learner outcomes, increase scale and reduce costs. Customers include 70% of Australian Universities, all Australian State Governments, Boston University, Northeastern University, Kings College London, MIT, the Institute for Experiential Learning, UC Davis, and over 2,000 employers including EY, CSIRO, Austrade, Deloitte as well as many start-up and community organisations. 

Practera supports national-scale, Government sponsored student-industry programs in Australia that engage tens of thousands of students per annum with thousands of employers.

 A sense of the platform interface and the experiences we enable can be found below:

• Primary Student / mentor delivery interface; https://vimeo.com/323039007
• ‘Skills Passport’ e-portfolio interface; Skills Passport’ e-portfolio interface; https://vimeo.com/325134916
• Practera AI based Experiential Learning Support Assistant (ELSA) https://vimeo.com/323032096  

Recently Practera’s work has been recognised by the Edtech Digest Awards, QS-Wharton Reimagine Awards, AFR Higher Education Awards, Canadian e-Learning Conference, as a 'Westpac Business of Tomorrow', a US AWS edstart awardee, an 'EY Accelerating Entrepreneurs Asia-Pacific' winner, and our investors include Northeastern University and Main Sequence Ventures, the Australian Governments deep technology innovation fund.

Our solution is intended to ensure businesses around the world are equipped with appropriate trade skills, resources, and networks to access international opportunities. 

With our target population of internationally trading businesses and professionals in trade being heavily impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, we feel this is an ideal time to emphasise scaling our solution globally to benefit as many businesses in as many geographies as we can.

The pandemic has disproportionately impacted MSMEs and exposed how existing efforts to support disadvantaged communities around the world have been insufficient in making them resilient to global crises. Trade can spell one way forward for MSMEs to boost their resilience and recovery from the economic shock of the pandemic. 

With our unique skills development platform that takes participants on an experiential learning pathway to develop their trade capability, we believe we are well-placed to deliver a unique learning environment for businesses and professionals to acquire the skills they need. 

The benefits of experiential learning over traditional knowledge acquisition pathways include: 

• The ability to immediately apply knowledge, which can be crucial in the fast-paced world of international trade;
• Access to real-time coaching and feedback, which we provide through our personalised mentoring program via GTPA coaches;
• Promoting teamwork and communication skills, which is facilitated by our simulation-based learning program as well as the broader GTPA ecosystem participants enter into;
• Greater awareness of accomplishments and needed areas of improvement, considering the real-time, feedback-back rich nature of the learning environment.

By including trade competency recognition via GTPA’s credentials under ISO/IEC 17024 and ISO/IEC 17065 – as well as pathways for continuous professional development - we reinforce the outcomes achieved by participants in our programmes. They gain not only trade skills and knowledge, but also a credential backed by ISO/IEC standards to reinforce their competencies with potential business partners and a pathway to continue their learning journey, if desired.

International trade is a practical vocation, and our unique approach to trade skills development reflects the fact that some skills are best learned and reinforced through practical application. 

Our solutions are in the prototype phase and we plan to deploy them worldwide during the second half of 2020. 

Given the Covid-19 pandemic and its economic impact, we plan to initially offer complimentary access to our solutions where possible. This is in recognition of the funding and revenue constraints the pandemic has imposed and the impact this has had especially smaller businesses, as well as our belief in the role our solutions can play in the economy recovery to come.

Our goal is to have 1,000 certified global trade professionals from around the world at the end of the year and 1,000 certified globally trading businesses. 

In five years, our goal is to expand this to 5,000 certified professionals and 19,200 certified businesses.

With adequate support internationally, the scalability of our solutions means these numbers can be significantly higher. Practera has already demonstrated in other application spaces the scalability to hundreds of thousands of users on its technology platform.

The potential number of people the GTPA’s solution can directly and meaningfully impact is very large and includes professionals and businesses engaged in international trade in all countries, provided they meet minimum competency requirements. 

In the EU for example, there are an estimated 25 million SMEs, the majority of which are micro-sized firms employing less than nine people. Globally, there are estimated to be around 450-500 million SMEs, the bulk of which are informal enterprises. The number of formal enterprises is estimated to be around 25-30 million. 

Within the next year, our goal is to successfully launch our Global Business Catalyst programme and related mentoring, as well as our experiential learning solutions and certification, establishing them as desirable and valuable competency recognition tools for businesses worldwide.

We are hoping these programs will have a transformational impact on smaller businesses and professionals by helping them access opportunities through GVCs by establishing trust in their competency and capability as trusted actors in international trade.

Our solutions will be most effective when a critical mass of certified professionals and businesses is achieved, helping promote the exposure and value in certification.

Within five years we hope to achieve this critical mass, building a global ecosystem of certified global trade professionals and globally trading businesses. Some specific goals include:

• Growing our Global Trade Professional certification program based on ISO/IEC 17024, the recognised international standard for the certification of competent people;
• Growing our Globally Trading Business certification program based on ISO/IEC 17065, the recognised international standard for the certification of global businesses;
• Creating a harmonised set of competency requirements for various trade professional functions;
• Approving education providers around the world and their courses as suitable for providing knowledge related to this harmonised set of competency requirements;
• Establishing a forum for global trade professionals to exchange ideas and knowledge, and reward excellence in global trade skills;
• Developing and empower female participation in global trade through the GTP programme;
• Providing a platform for trade knowledge sharing and capacity-building for MSMEs from developing and least-developed countries.

Our largest overall barrier to overcome is the market/demand-side impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a hybrid non-profit/for-profit organisation, we must seek revenue against our investment in our solutions and will pursue realistic avenues of generating this revenue once the crisis subsides. 

There is a cost associated in the development and delivery of our solutions which we are internally subsidising in the short-term given the economic situation created by the pandemic, but in the medium and longer terms there will be costs associated with participating in our programs which may pose a barrier to participation.

Legal and cultural barriers may exist as potential applicants are required to submit supporting documentation depending on their circumstances and the certification they wish to achieve.

Market barriers may exist in the form of language and localisation issues.

In the short-term we plan to overcome the market and demand-side impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by offering our solutions free-of-charge. This approach is designed to maintain the attractiveness of engaging in our programs while remaining conscious of the pandemic’s economic impact.

In the medium and longer terms, we will ensure our pricing strategy is realistically aligned to what the market can bear, especially in developing countries. We will seek partnerships with organisations that are in a position to help subsidise the cost of access to our programs wherever possible in order to ensure the widest possible reach for our solutions.

To address any legal, cultural or market-based barriers, we rely upon our experienced network of advisors and experts around the world who are able to provide appropriate advice as and where needed.

To address market barriers, our solutions use English as the standard language of international trade and we are prepared to adapt our solutions to local conditions where necessary. We can also rely on our network of globally experienced experts to assist in overcoming these issues.

The GTPA has dedicated 5 staff to working on our solutions full time. These include CEO Lisa McAuley, Director Collins Rex, VP Trade Policy and Research Dr Tomas Quesada, and Head of Global Trade Policy and VP Europe Niels Strazdins. We will leverage our worldwide network of 30 trade professionals where necessary.

Practera has 42 staff across learning design, program support and technology in 8 countries available to work on our solutions part time and on an as needed basis. These include Co-Founder and Co-CEO Beau Lease, Project Lead Shi-Shi Troung, and Senior Learning Designer Dr Valeria Pashkova.

The GTPA was founded by an experienced leader in international trade with a background in capacity building, skills development, and success recognition for new and smaller businesses. As CEO of the GTPA and previously CEO of a non-profit industry association focused on smaller businesses, she has dedicated her career to assisting MSMEs build their capacity and capability to compete on the global stage. 

She has devised and championed a number of unique initiatives to assist SMEs overcome barriers to trade and receive recognition in the market for their accomplishments.

The GTPA leadership team, board of directors and network of external experts is similarly experienced. They bring to the organisation backgrounds in practical trade training, international engagement in developing countries and LDCs, specialised knowledge in areas such as standardisation, trade finance and supply chains, national and international research and policy development, and a track record close engagement with governments and international organisation involved in trade and development.

The Practera leadership and project teams lend their technical expertise, proven technology platform, and experiential learning design and experience to the solution. 

Equipped with these backgrounds, specialised skillsets and knowledge areas, and experience in trade skills development and business recognition, our dedicated team and broader network is well-placed to deliver our solutions.

We partner with governments, international organisations, academic institutions, multinational companies and other non-profits around the world. Below are a few highlights of our current partnerships.

We are working with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to deliver a three-year program aimed at building support services for small business in developing countries.

We are working with the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide (Australia) and the University of Sussex (UK) and Practera to launch an executive education program focusing on adaptive leadership in a globalised world.

We are working with Bloomberg New Economy Solutions to develop a solution to promote greater integration of small and medium sized businesses into the global value chains of multinational companies.

Amongst international institutions, we collaborate with and seek input from the likes of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia Pacific Economic Corporation (APEC), and trade-related United Nations agencies on projects relating to trade facilitation and helping MSMEs access new markets.

We also partner with other non-profit organisations to pursue projects with specific aims, such as helping indigenous businesses in Australia access international buyers.

Our business model is based on delivery of programs, projects and strategic partnerships with like-minded government agencies, education institutions, international organisations and non-profits that complement our core focus areas. 

We are a hybrid non-profit/for-profit organisation that attracts grant and project funding for specific initiatives, and we aim to commercialise our skills development and certification programs over the longer term as a sustainable revenue stream.

The key beneficiaries of our work are the government agencies, academic institutions and international organisations we partner with on specific project delivery on one side, and the individual professionals and businesses engaged in international trade we target with our solutions on the other.

Our partners and growing ecosystem of certified professionals and businesses benefit from our collective efforts to establish and promote initiatives that bring new and unique tools to market in the hopes of reducing barriers to trade, promoting greater inclusivity, promoting continuous professional redevelopment, and establishing a trusted and mutually-reinforcing ecosystem of actors in trade. 

The GTPA operates a model that combines grant-funded project work and fee-for-service offerings.

We attract grants to deliver specific projects and initiatives and sustain our day-to-day operations. 

We complement our grant funding through fee-for-service offerings that include our skills development and certification solutions. We are pursuing financial sustainability through these fee-for-service offerings over the longer rather than shorter term, considering the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The GTPA is dedicated to promoting a more harmonised and inclusive international trading system and develops solutions to facilitate this.

 Solve’s determination to find solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges and its focus on overcoming barriers to creating good jobs and entrepreneurial activities is a natural fit for us, considering the important role international trade can play in achieving this goal.

Solve’s community of peers, funders and experts will help lend us the resources and facilitate the exposure we need to spread our solution as far as possible and into as many markets and geographies as we can. Our solutions are most effective at scale, and we are very encouraged by the prospect of leveraging the Solve community to help us achieve this scale and reach new businesses and professionals around the world.

We recognise the depth of assistance required to build the skills and capabilities of businesses and professionals in developing countries and are encouraged by Solve’s emphasis on fostering job creation and skills developing amongst marginalised populations.

We believe our solutions can be an effective tool to help, and with the assistance of the Solve community we are confident that together we can enable small and new businesses to prosper by equipping them with the necessary trade skills and knowledge to succeed internationally.

We are seeking partnerships that can increase the exposure of GTPA’s solutions as widely as possible, as well as partnerships that can bolster our funding and revenue streams to allow us to deliver these solutions. 

 Given the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are very keen to pursue partnerships with public or private organisations who are able to subsidise the cost of participating in our solutions for businesses and professionals, especially in developing countries.

We are seeking partners that see mutual opportunity in collaborating with the GTPA and working with us to build a more inclusive and sustainable future through trade. We believe our solutions can play a key role in helping businesses and professionals develop the skills necessary to succeed in trade and achieve global recognition of their competencies.

We are interested in partnering with like-minded organisations who are able to promote GTPA solutions to increase awareness and exposure of our solutions, or who are able to subsidise participation in our solutions so that we can increase access to more businesses and professionals.

We are open to partnerships with organisations of all types – public, private, non-profit, government or academic – that are able to assist in these areas. GTPA places high value on partnerships and we are very flexible in the ways in which we can collaborate. We will always explore the potential for mutual benefit with like-minded organisations.

We acknowledge the economic impact resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic and are open to financial partnerships that would allow us to increase the reach of our solutions and allow for the largest number of participants as possible. This can be either through direct sponsorship of our work, funding to subsidise access for participants to our solutions, or broader collaboration on wide-scale roll-out of our solutions in new geographies.

We are interested in national-level pilot programs in new countries/regions and are keen to collaborate with larger partners with the reach and scope to help facilitate this. 

 Where there are opportunities to incorporate some of our solutions into broader initiatives other organisations are pursuing, we are open to exploring this potential and/or to licensing our tools or content, as well as to leveraging our internal knowledge and experience in an advisory or consulting capacity.

The GTPA’s solutions are aimed at advancing inclusive economic growth through upskilling professionals and business’ in international trade. They help identify existing skills gaps, facilitate capacity building in an experiential learning environment, identify pathways forward for continuous professional development and recognise trade competency through globally recognised certification backed by ISO/IEC standards. 

Delivered in a digital learning environment, the solutions also assist in promoting greater digital literacy amongst participants.

We aim to scale our solutions globally in order to deliver the most good by facilitating greater participation in international trade through skills development and competency recognition. We are therefore very interested in including a future pilot of our solutions in Portugal, and in the Foundation’s potential assistance in facilitating this market introduction.

The Award would assist us in reaching new markets and providing greater access to our solutions by subsidising development or participation.