Many factors go into making a business successful, and where it is located can be the first major decision for investors and entrepreneurs.

The World Factbook provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.

Market conditions, opportunities, regulations, and business customs for over 125 countries prepared by trade and industry experts at U.S. embassies worldwide.

Expanding your business to another country can help you open up new markets and even develop country-specific products. If international business were easy, however, every small business would be opening up international offices. When you do business overseas, you'll need to consider the cultural mandates of each country in which you do business, and you will also need to ensure you obey both local and international laws.

The aspirations of doing business in other countries come with several challenges and prerequisites that you need to consider before stepping into the world of expanding your abroad. Here we go into the specifics of conducting business in a foreign country, things to look out for, pitfalls etc. to get you started with your international expansion plans.

Starting a business in another country can be financially and emotionally rewarding if you do your homework, have realistic expectations for success, and avoid or compensate for the potential obstacles that inevitably accompany a new venture. All new businesses are inherently risky. In the United States, perhaps one of the most friendly climes in the world for entrepreneurship, almost one-half of new business operations fail by the end of the fourth year, and one in four fail by the end of the first year.

While there are no statistics indicating the failure rate of new enterprises by country, you should assume that the difficulty of achieving success is as least as hard in a foreign land as here in the United States. However, there are a number of tips and techniques you can follow to help better the odds of success.

Economic information about countries of the world. (Courtesy of FAU. Users will need to sign in with their FAU user name and password.

Country economic profiles.

The World Bank Group is formulating a new approach to assessing the business and investment climate in economies worldwide following the discontinuation of the Doing Business project. Updates on the development of the new Business Enabling Environment (BEE) project will be published on this website as they become available. In the interim, this website will act as a one-stop shop to spotlight a set of curated indicators and resources for users focused on improving the business environment.