John Yunker’s most recent article at Corante.Com is a great example of the limitations to globalization. As Yunker points out, not all ideas transfer and the sensibilities of the local community need to be taken into account:
As Sesame Street has learned, the days of dumping dubbed videos onto other markets is coming to an end. Local competitors may not have the production values but they will beat you with the simple fact that they know their audience better than you do. So it’s not enough to do one iteration of globalization - be it product or Web site - and be done with it. The competitive bar will continue to escalate. That’s the great irony of globalization — on one hand we see commodization and harmonization as Starbucks, and the like, blanket the world, but we also see differentiation of a different kind as global brands reinvent themselves locally.