How 'Globality' Will Change Your Life

Columnist Hal Sirkin introduces his series covering the enormous challenges and opportunities inherent in a world where commerce and ideas flow between all parts of the world

by Harold L. Sirkin

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Why should you take time out from your busy day to read a column about "globality," a term you may never have heard before and aren't even sure is a real word? Good question.

Let me offer what I think is an equally good answer: You should read this column because it will discuss a new era of freewheeling business competition that is about to change your life—both personally and professionally. It also will change the lives of your children and your children's children. It's that big. (And for the record: Although used infrequently, globality is a legitimate word—first used, according to our research here at Boston Consulting Group in the 1940s.)

Globality will present the greatest management challenge of your lifetime. It also will offer the greatest opportunities. And the fate of companies, jobs, and entire economies may well be determined by how well you understand the phenomenon and the new cast of characters, and how quickly, boldly, and creatively you are able to act as a manager.

The full title of a new book which I co-authored recently, GLOBALITY: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, points out how big this is.

What Globality Will Look Like

And that's what lies just ahead: You and your company—whether it's a U.S., Western European, Japanese, or Korean company—will soon be competing with hundreds of previously unknown companies from dozens of other countries, many of them what we used to call Third World countries, for energy, raw materials, skilled and unskilled workers, management talent, scientists and engineers, knowledge, financing, customers, markets, and virtually everything else.

Unlike globalization, globality will not be a one-way street, with U.S., Western European, and Japanese companies seeking competitive advantage overseas, through low-cost labor and increased sales in rapidly developing markets. Instead, it will be a global economic free-for-all which may be hard to imagine. And it will take real skill and ingenuity to come out on top.

Readers alive during the early Cold War may recall a system of Arctic and Canadian radar stations called the distant early warning (DEW) Line, intended to warn the U.S.—in the days before intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—of a possible Soviet bomber attack.

This column and future columns will provide corporate managers, business and economic analysts, and policymakers a distant early warning about major changes in the global economy that go far beyond what we usually think of as globalization.

Answering the Global Questions

I'll discuss and analyze these changes and offer suggestions for managing such change. The columns will be partially descriptive, offering what BusinessWeek editors would call "good solid reporting" about the "New Global Challengers," the term we use to describe the hundreds of companies from all over the world that will force everyone from everywhere to compete for everything. The columns also will be partially prescriptive, attempting to answer the question: What should you do, where, when, and why?

I'll discuss the changing nature of competition and how you can help turn a perceived threat into an opportunity.

I'll discuss country advantages—China's well-known low-cost labor, for example, and Poland's proximity to Western Europe—and ways to capitalize on or minimize these advantages, whichever might be most appropriate to you.

I'll look at the difference between low-cost (a straight economic calculation) and right cost, which involves many other factors. We'll discuss "growing" and managing talent. We'll discuss the difference between research and development and innovation—and the need to innovate with ingenuity.

A New Era of Collaboration

I'll discuss the next billion consumers in the rapidly developing economies and what we refer to as "local sweet spots," or tailoring your products for specific markets.