GLOBALITY Blog #3: You're Not Just Competing for Customers

It's the final day of blog hosting by the authors of GLOBALITY: Competing with Everyone From Everywhere for Everything. Jim Hemerling, co-author and senior partner of The Boston Consulting Group's San Francisco office, is our host today; he'll be checking in every now and then to take your questions. - - - - - - - You're Not Just Competing for Customers In the era of globality, we will all be competing with everyone from everywhere for everything. I want to talk about what everything means. Customers, of course. The big multinationals from the West and Japan -- the "incumbents," as we call them -- suddenly find themselves competing with the "global challengers" (based in the rapidly developing economies) for customers in the challengers' home markets, in the incumbents' home markets, and in every other market around the world. Commodities, too. I'm talking about bauxite and aluminum, palm oil, shipping containers, iron ore, natural gas, cotton -- every raw material that's needed to run a business could suddenly become scarce or pricey. Talent is another big consideration. Human resources used to be mostly about recruiting (or poaching) the best people for the slots you needed to fill, then doing your best to keep them happy and motivated. Now it's different. There's a real scarcity of specialized talent. Some employees don't want to live and work where companies need them. And, in many countries, there just aren't enough people with the right skills to run factories or manage services. Everything also includes: capital, intellectual property, brand awareness, press coverage, real estate, equipment, partners and suppliers. You name it. Almost everything is up for grabs. Almost nothing can be locked up. With the cost of fuel skyrocketing, you may not even be able to book a flight from wherever you are to wherever you want to go! - - - - - - - Thanks to Hal, Arindam, and Jim, authors of GLOBALITY for hosting our blog this week! If you're interested in learning more about the book and/or the authors, check out their website.