By Ed Sperling

Santa Clara, Calif.—Feb. 5, 2009—Cross-cultural communication has always had its challenges, but globalization is raising it from the level of nuisance to necessity.

 

Across the board, from systems companies to those that develop the tools to build the components that go into those systems, building international teams that can embrace a single corporate culture has emerged as one of the big business challenges.

 

“The main learning about having different sites around the globe is respecting the culture of where that site is,” Rich Goldman, vice president of strategic alliances at Synopsys, said during a panel at DesignCon. “Engineers are the same around the world, so there is a certain level of communication that always works. But at another level, cultures are very different. What you may think is the worst thing possible is a normal part of culture for another country. You have to go to that country to experience it. That’s the only way to overcome differences.”

 

And overcoming those differences is essential. Cisco’s vice president of engineering, Sri Hosakote, said globalization is a core competency of every company that does business in a global economy. “It’s a skill that is mandatory,” he said.

 

Hosakote said one of the keys is getting employees in other countries to understand the corporate mission the same way employees do in a place like Silicon Valley. That frequently requires bringing managers to the United States, letting them sit in on meetings and work in Silicon Valley and sometimes even enrolling them in executive courses at schools like Stanford. He said when that happens, “they get it.”

 

“It takes two to five years to get a culture of globalization,” he said. “Collaboration is the hardest piece. It’s particularly hard when it comes to multiple sites.

 

But there’s more to operating in a global environment than just a common vision. There also has to be an efficient structure everywhere. Brani Buric, executive vice president of marketing and sales at Virage Logic, said that for every situation—whether the operation is located in a place where labor is cheap or expensive—the office has to be optimized.

 

“What we’re seeing with globalization is just the first phase,” Buric said. “A couple of years from now this will go way beyond product engineering and R&D. New markets are opening and we will see good product specs for markets in places like China. There will be R&D, specs, marketing, implementation and a sales channel in these places.

 

One facet of globalization is outsourcing. While outsourcing continues to gain ground in markets such as IT services and support, many technology companies believe the cost differential is not enough to offset the benefits of having their own operation—whether it’s R&D or sales—in a foreign country.

 

“Sometimes running it ourselves is cheaper in some ways,” said Kirk Law, vice president of systems products engineering at NetApp. “There are a lot of different ways to measure value. It’s not just a spreadsheet decision.”

Tags: business, Cisco, economics, globalization, management, NetApp, Synopsys, System-Level Design, Virage Logic

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