International business development evolves through the normal processes of trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the advancement of technology in undeveloped nations. In order to achieve sustainable global business development, business professionals often must find ways of adapting to the cultures and societies within which they operate and conduct business. With huge growth opportunities created by the emerging middle class of nations such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries), many companies in the developed world are stepping in to provide goods and services to those countries’ consumers, and business development professionals provide the necessary legal, financial, and cultural bridges between supplier and consumer.

In business, outsourcing is the contracting out of a business process to a third-party. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another, but not always. Outsourcing is also used to describe the practice of handing over control of public services to for-profit corporations. Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic contracting, and sometimes includes off-shoring or relocating a business function to another country. Financial savings from lower international labor rates is a big motivation for outsourcing/off-shoring. The opposite of outsourcing is called in-sourcing, which entails bringing processes handled by third-party firms in-house, and is sometimes accomplished via vertical integration. However, a business can provide a contract service to another business without necessarily in-sourcing that business process.

In a global strategic partnership, two or more firms from different countries work as a team. They pool their resources or skills to provide better products or services. Furthermore, they reach a broader audience through collaboration. Firms engage in global strategic partnerships because they believe the partnership will lead to synergy, which means increased economic benefits. As the globalization of economies, societies, and cultures continues, and nations become more integrated through networks of exchange, international business development and global strategic management continues to evolve. Global firms that employ business development professionals in multiple locations who share exactly the same body of knowledge, ethics, practices, and standards benefit from a shared body of knowledge and ethics. These companies are well positioned for growth, as are the societies in which they operate.

Analytics is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Especially valuable in areas rich with recorded information, analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance. Analytics often favors data visualization to communicate insight. Firms may commonly apply analytics to business data, to describe, predict, and improve business performance. Specifically, arenas within analytics include enterprise decision management, retail analytics, store assortment and stock-keeping unit optimization, marketing optimization and marketing mix modeling, web analytics, sales force sizing and optimization, price and promotion modeling, predictive science, credit risk analysis, and fraud analytics. Since analytics can require extensive computation, the algorithms and software used for analytics harness the most current methods in computer science, statistics, and mathematics.

Global strategy as defined in business terms is an organization’s strategic guide to globalization. A sound global strategy should address these questions: what must be (versus what is) the extent of market presence in the world’s major markets? How to build the necessary global presence? What must be and (versus what is) the optimal locations around the world for the various value chain activities? How to run global presence into global competitive advantage? A global strategy may be appropriate in industries where firms are faced with strong pressures for cost reduction but with weak pressures for local responsiveness. Therefore, it allows these firms to sell a standardized product worldwide. However, fixed costs (capital equipment) are substantial. Nevertheless, these firms are able to take advantage of scale economies and experience curve effects, because it is able to mass-produce a standard product which can be exported (providing that demand is greater than the costs involved). Global strategies require firms to tightly coordinate their product and pricing strategies across international markets and locations, and therefore firms that pursue a global strategy are typically highly centralized.

Glocalization (a portmanteau of globalization and localization) is a term denoting the adaptation of a product or service specifically to each locality or culture in which it is sold. It is similar to internationalization. The term “glocalization” is a neologism of globalization and localization, referring to a concept to describe individual, group, organization, product or service that reflects not only global standard but also local one.