Featured article by Rob Vandenberg, President and CEO of Lingotek
Remember when people first started talking about globalization in the 1980s? Branching out into new markets usually meant physically expanding to somewhere in Europe or the U.K. It required opening new offices, growing new markets through direct sales and having dedicated translators interpret content by hand.
That equation has dramatically changed. Globalization has become fast and cheap enough to be done in real-time. Becoming a global business is no longer a privilege, but a given. It’s no longer a matter of finding the right location, but finding the right app store and audience. In this new world of globalization, businesses must focus less on the means of production and more on answering one important question: What makes you different?
The New Age of Globalization
Back in the 1980s and even 1990s, it took enough time and resources to go global that only the biggest and most well-funded companies did it. Companies would go international only when their U.S. market share was nearly saturated. It wasn’t something your average SMB did nor was it something to aspire to. There was too much involved.
The outsourcing craze was the first in a chain of events to change that. U.S. enterprises raced to outsource production to other countries such as China, where workers could make hardware and components faster and for a lower price than their U.S. counterparts. This enabled American companies to focus more on value-adds like product diversification and higher levels of service.
Because production was cheap, companies could devote more funds to addressing global markets. Success became a matter of gaining first-mover advantages in emerging markets. It helped that many of these markets including China, were gaining wealth of their own by becoming manufacturing centers. Seeking to expand, U.S. companies began to focus more on becoming global brands. That’s why Apple removed the original “Computer” from its name around the time of the iPod.
The hunger for outsourcing climbed up the value ladder so that functions like engineering and customer service were also being done remotely. Cheap manufacturing meant hardware grew affordable to the point of commoditization. Easy access to labor and the ever-growing sophistication of online technologies meant that startups could rent enterprise-caliber applications (via SaaS) and innovate on smartphones and tablets to create products that could feasibly out-compete major corporations.
Business, Democratized
Globalization, if that term even still applies, is massively different from what it was 20 years ago. It means you try out your product somewhere, adapt quickly and see if you succeed. If your brand isn’t global yet it probably will be soon. All that matters is that you act quickly and address your market in a relevant way.
Now that everyone has access to cost-effective and -efficient means of production, the formula for success is less about strategy and more about experimentation. This is why practices such as agile, lean and DevOps have become commonplace. The new globalization is real-time, cloud-based and iterative.
Automated tools have replaced manual efforts—instead of translating content word by word, you can plug it into an engine for translation, crowdsource it, or even assign it to a professional translator from directly within your workflow. Translation, localizations and versions are updated quickly and automatically. You can now expand into a greater number of new markets more quickly in order to gain the global market share that could make or break your company’s long-term success.
Consider WordPress as an example. It now powers more than 20% of the world’s websites. At this year’s WordCamp conference, lead developer Andrew Nacin explained how translation has fundamentally changed for the company. Years ago, he said, someone in a new country would go through every single core file and manually modify the strings before releasing a translation of WordPress. Updating was also done manually.
Today, that model has fundamentally shifted. Users can translate language strings without any coding or technical knowledge. All translations are automatically updated. This simple translation process will help WordPress seamlessly expand into their goal of 50-100 new global markets.
Success in the Global Economy
Rather than a privilege reserved for a few large companies, globalization has become a normal part of doing business. It doesn’t take much time or energy to build the next great app—or, as sometimes happens, build copycat versions of popular apps like Spotify or Google Hangouts, to be sold here or abroad.
Everyone has the means of production so products and services proliferate. The next big challenge is differentiating yourself in this environment of global competition and confusion. Where do you stand?
Rob Vandenberg, President and CEO of Lingotek | The Translation Network
As President and CEO of Lingotek, Rob is driving the vision of a company that is looking to change the future of translation.
Prior to being named president of Lingotek in 2008, Vandenberg served as its Vice President of Sales and Marketing where he was a source of guidance and inspiration. Prior to Lingotek, Rob headed up several successful ventures. He was co-founder and CEO of LocalVoice.com, which was acquired by HarrisConnect in 2005. He was named Vice President of Sales and Marketing for HarrisConnect after the acquisition. Before his work with LocalVoice.com and HarrisConnect, he was one of the first 20 U.S. employees at INTERSHOP Communications, where he helped build its worldwide clientele as a top-performing Sales Executive. The INTERSHOP initial public offering was one of the most successful enterprise IPOs in US history boasting a $10B market cap.
Rob holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Economics from UC Berkeley.
