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Reijo Luostarinen and Mika Gabrielsson Globalization has become a focus of interest throughout the world.* It is a swearword for some (r)evolutionary communities; it is one of the challenging issues for international organizations; it is also one of the key topics of many national governments; it is an attractive business strategy at the company level; it is a controversial subject for the man in the street; finally it is a growing area of interest in research and teaching in many business schools and universities. In view of the above, it is understandable that the term ‘globalization’ can be used in different contexts and can have many different meanings and interpretations. Different societies, such as companies, labour unions, universities, economies and cultures, are globalizing. In this chapter the globalization of firms is under focus. However, even in business, globalization has been studied from different angles. An analysis of the globalization of management thoughts and attitudes has brought an interesting classification à la Perlmutter (1969): ethnocentric, polycentric, regiocentric and geocentric (global). Studies of the globalization of marketing have resulted in two opposite categories: standardization and differentiation (Levitt, 1983). ‘Think globally, act locally’ has become one of the major slogans in MNCs, indicating the challenging effort involved in searching for a balance. In addition to this, different firms in different countries have globalized at different times and in different ways. In this chapter the latest globalization phenomenon, the born global company, is...