A friend of mine had a small business reselling business copiers and printers in Évora, in the interior of Portugal. After 5 years of battling he folded in, selling his business for peanuts. The reason? Big corporations and the Internet. In his words "I cannot compete with these [big] sites that sell printers at such a low price".

What my friend did not realize was that behind some of these "big" sites, there are usually very small operations. This is the beauty of the Internet as a business medium. As long as you act respectfully, honestly, fast and urgently you can pretend you are big. And for all purposes you are big.

If you are a small regional entrepreneur being wiped out by global competition you need to start thinking along these lines. Before, you contracted global products and sold them in your local market. Now you should focus on contracting local goods (or local skills) and sell them globally. Ask the questions: Does your region provide something unique that tourists always buy when they go there? Do you have a set of local people with uncommon skills that your local market cannot exhaust?

The opportunity is to be the conduit between local supply and global demand. Use your local knowledge to establish supply relations and use the Internet to get in touch with your new dispersed, global market.