THE NEW NORMAL:

About the Book

The essence of this book is not to scare individuals or businesses operating on either local, national or global scales. It is, however, meant to draw our attention to the fact that; certain changes in global business outlook have occurred so fast and these changes have definitely come to stay. In effect, there undoubtedly needs to be an accompanying paradigm shift in our normal business modules, routines and operations if we need to live up with the times. Large Multinational corporations are no exception to this. Nonetheless, starts-ups and SME's need to be keener on digitization and online presence if they wish to scale up operations to national and international levels. This book would borrow plenty of events and examples within Europe, America and Africa. However, a wakeup-call will mostly be directed towards start-ups and SMEs in the continent of Africa which are neither showing interest in going digital yet nor are proving active in augmenting their existing digital technologies. I spent 22years of my life in Cameroon, a country which is located in West and Central Africa before was later exposed to alternative digital experiences in other parts of the world. I thought of warning you ahead, just because some of the stories I will share in this book are massively shaped by where I have spent my life the most. Let’s get straight into it. I begin by exposing some realities in Cameroon as to where Start-ups and SME’s are at, with regards to digitization and e-commerce. This would serve as a starting point to the practical realities and theoretical knowledge this book intends to pass across.

About the Author

Mr. Lefor Joseph Lefor is a holder of MSc International Business degree in the United Kingdom. The young inspirer and lover of digital innovation has worked across several departments in higher education for over 2years and counting. These include: Student Services, Disability Services and Admissions. Those job roles in addition to previous internships and placement in-and-out of the United Kingdom have exposed him well enough to understand that digitalizing your business is a super-duper. Joseph was shortlisted as one of the four from the Republic of Cameroon to represent the continent of Africa at the UNCTAD Youth and Global Investment Forum which took place at Palais Des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in October 2018. He seeks to inspire start-ups and SME owners around the globe to crave digital skills as a key strategy to scale up to national and international levels in business. This is one of the core reasons why he embarked on writing his first ever published book titled: The New Normal; Digitization, Digitalization and E-commerce in International Business. On the 16th of July 2020, he decided to embark on this project but wasn’t quite sure about his decision. However, It was along the narrow paths of Cherry Hinton Brook towards the tail end of Mill Road in Cambridge that he said ‘yes’ to this project and embraced it entirely. He runs an online store called ‘Bambridge Shop’. He derived the name from his best two cities in the world: Bamenda and Cambridge. The city of Bamenda in his home country Cameroon and the city of Cambridge which is his resident city in the United Kingdom.