Which parts of your manufacturing process are carried out in your own plant and which are outsourced? Who are your biggest competitors? How do you plan to grow your business?
Those were the questions that MIT’s Suzanne Berger and a dozen colleagues asked during worldwide travels to more than 500 companies. Skeptical of the claims by all-out optimists and pessimists, the MIT group decided to see for themselves how competition is reshaping global economic forces. The structure of the book reflects their systematic research: a big-picture look at how the international economy has changed over the past twenty years; an analysis of their interview responses from the companies; and finally the lessons they learned as a result.
They addressed their questions to managers in electronics, software, autos, clothing, and textiles. The upshot: There are many models of success, not one single path. “Succeeding in a world of global competition is a matter of choices, not a matter of searching for the one best way—we discovered no misconception about globalization more dangerous than this illusion of certainty,” Berger writes.
The book lends the conversation on globalization a healthy dose of perspective. The authors remind us, for instance, that outsourcing as we know it has been developing for a long time: “The first jobs relocated overseas in the 1970s were in industries requiring relatively low levels of skill: toys, clothing, shoes, printed circuit-board assembly. By the 1980s, the increasing level of skills that could be found in a number of low-wage Southeast Asian and East Asian countries, like Taiwan, Malaysia, and South Korea, made it possible to set up more complex manufacturing operations....”
In the end, the rigor of the research supporting this book makes How We Compete one of the more nuanced and credible entries of recent times into the frequently fractious debate on globalization.