"Like Marko Polo discovering a new world of trade, organizations today are exploring vast new markets throughout the globe. The process is nothing less than a revolution, breaking down once sacrosanct boundaries of space, time, and nationality...In today's world, there is no longer a dichotomy between domestic and foreign. Global boundaries between companies, markets, and people have become irrevocably blurred...For companies such as Unilever, ABB, and SmithKline Beecham, globalization has become a natural part of their business, an integral part of their culture. For most companies, however, the goal to become truly global in mindset, staff, and market seems a stretch. Although the oportunities are tempting, the effort, knowledge, and skill required are much greater than for running a domestic operation, and the risks-once you probe beneath the surface-are equally enormous"(pp.261-262).In this context, the authors, in Chapter 8, first put forward the following ten reasons why organizations might want to become more global: competitive survival, cost spreading, trailblazing, rule of three, domino effect, evolutionary forces, technological revolution, search for innovation, ripple effect, and benchmarking against other companies. Then, they discuss seven challenges companies face in making the global leap: (1)Establishing a workable global structure, (2)Hiring global supermanagers, (3)Managing people for a global environment, (4)Learning to love cultural differences, (5)Avoiding parochialism and arrogance, (6)Designing unifying mechanisms and a global mindset, (7)Overcoming complexity.In Chapter 9, to overcome these challenges, they show action plans, and suggest ways of moving forward, from learner to launcher and from launcher to leader into the global arena as summarized as below:I- From Global Learner to Global Launcher1. Human Resources Practices* Supply language/cultural sensitivity training.* Standardize forms and procedures.* Set up an overseas presence via joint venture, modest acquisition, or establishment of a headquarters.* Engage in extensive cross-border relationship building.2. Organizational Structures* Arrange short-term visits and international assignments.* Staff for more diversity in management and board of directors.* Use e-mail and videoconferencing to maintain day-to-day contact.3. Organizational Processes and Systems* Establish worldwide shared values, language, and operating principles.* Conduct fact-finding missions.* Design ad hoc transnational teams.* Hold global town meetings and best-practice exchanges of information.II- From Global Launcher to Global Leader1. Human Resources Practices* Seek complete liquidity of human resources: recruit outside the domestic base; place foreign recruits within the domestic base; promote the best people to global assignments; rotate people internationally; use twinning.* Aim for a global structure.* Map global processes.2. Organizational Structure* Provide continuing global leadership trining and regular transnational training to reinforce the global mindset.* Remove/minimize country managers and replace with global managers and focus on global customers.* Routinize real-time global communications.3. Organizational Processes and Systems* Use global reward systems.* Multiply ongoing transnational project teams.* Work for global integration (for example, total global sourcing, global design, global engineering, and global purchasing).Finally, they write that "Many tools are available to organizations, and we have described a good number of them here (as summarized above). But senior management must have the skill and foresight to use the right tools in the right way, at the right time, and in the right sequence...Each stage requires structures that enable the crossing of boundaries, systems and procedures that drive global behavior, and people who can learn to extend their thinking beyond their present outlook."Highly recommended.