“That is globalization — when everyone can play. It is not a game that six play and the others watch.” Nizan Guanaes, ABC Communications Group
New opportunities to go global — offered by technology and increasingly open markets — fit well with the entrepreneurial ethos. Many simply don’t see it as optional.
“I define globalization as sourcing capital from where it is cheapest, sourcing talent from where it is best available, producing where it is most cost effective and selling where the markets are not constrained by national boundaries,” says Narayana Murthy, founder and Chairman of Infosys Technologies Limited, a global software consulting company based in Bangalore, India.
As a result, Murthy says, “today’s entrepreneurs have to look at the entire globe as their arena. They will compete with countries that produce cheaper products and services; they’ll have to get talent from wherever it is available; and they’ll have to go to stock exchanges where they can best raise their money.”
This view is shared by Matthew Szulik, Chairman of Redhat Inc., the leading US-based open-source technology solutions provider.
“Globalization is part of the DNA of our company and our culture. In a technically driven business, you have to be instantly global because the technology is made available through the internet in milliseconds and reaches an audience from China to Boston. As a result we are instantly global — whether we like it or not.”
Murthy also credits technology as a major globalizing force. “Thanks to easier travel and better communications, such as the internet or CNN, the world is a global village. People feel much closer to each other than they felt 20 years ago.
“Thanks to the lowering of barriers caused by information flow, it is much easier to access outside markets. That, I believe, is the reason why globalization has become much more accepted today.”
Globalization, not colonization
What is meant by globalization has itself changed over the past 10 or 20 years — particularly for entrepreneurs who started out in emerging markets.
Today, globalization is about freedom of movement of capital, ideas and people, and the vital role that emerging markets have to play in a vibrant and prosperous world economy. It is not simply about the dominance of Western nations as investors or as potential markets.
When Murthy started Infosys in 1981 with just US$250, he says he was thinking globally for a very simple reason — to access Western markets. “We looked at India as a supply country for talent and to the Western nations, particularly the United States, for the demand for our services.”
But today, he explains, “while the US and the European markets continue to be important for us, the Indian market is growing rapidly.”
Nizan Guanaes, Chairman of ABC Communications Group, based in São Paulo, Brazil — the largest emerging market communications group, and ranked 20th worldwide — says in the past, “it wasn’t really globalization but colonization...there was only one way of doing things.”
But today, he says, globalization is more balanced. “No single country or region can provide the single perspective. [Brazil now has] many big companies that are considered players on a world stage. That is globalization — when everyone can play. It is not a game that six play and the others watch.”
