Own the Future: 50 Ways to Win from The Boston Consulting Group

Chapter 6

Globality: The World beyond Globalization

Harold L. Sirkin, Jim Hemerling, and Arindam K. Bhattacharya

Based on the authors' 2008 book, Globality—Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, published by Business Plus.

There is a new era of global business competition emerging that we call globality. Globality is not simply a new word for globalization; it is a fundamentally different phenomenon.

Globalization was an activity largely conducted by a set of multinational companies—based in the United States, Europe, and Japan—known as incumbents. They were driven by the quest for low-cost production and the desire to enter promising new markets in developing countries.

Globality is not an activity so much as it is an environment, a state of being. It is mainly fueled by a set of business competitors that are based not in the developed world but in the rapidly developing economies (RDEs). These are the global challengers.

In this environment, incumbents find themselves dealing with a range of new management issues—concerning costs, human resources, supply chains, innovation, and more—that we call the seven struggles of globality.

Globality presents both threats and opportunities to all players. Incumbents face tough new challenges, but these can be met and turned to advantage. Challengers stand at the brink of huge opportunities but still face barriers to seizing ...