DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014

DHL Global Connectedness Index 2014
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but also on how far or different they are from
your home base or other countries where you are
comfortable operating, as well as your company’s
capabilities to bridge such distances. The CAGE
Distance Framework can help identify and prioritize
the relevant types of distance and difference. 33
Furthermore, the DHL Global Connectedness Index can
also be a useful input to competitive analysis. Review
the connectedness profile of your company’s home
country and compare it to the profiles of your major
competitors’ home bases. What do such patterns imply
about the relative strengths and weaknesses that each
company inherits from its national context Do they
suggest strengths to exploit or weaknesses to remedy
A useful rule of thumb is that companies from countries
with higher depth scores are typically more adept at
adapting to cross-country differences.
Chapters 3 and 4 will pick up where this chapter’s
analysis of the globalization trends at the global
level left off, focusing, respectively, on depth and on
breadth. The depth of globalization can be a powerful
lever to expand prosperity—with the potential to add
trillions of dollars to global GDP. That depth is rising
again is a positive development, but its limited current
level today points to far more room for it to boost
growth than many realize.
Depth statistics such as those presented in this report
can also help dispel globaloney-induced fears that block
progress toward deeper global connectedness and the
prosperity that it could create. When Americans and
Europeans were surveyed as to whether they thought
their countries had too much immigration, simply
telling the respondents the true depth of immigration
(immigrants as a percentage of total population) in
their countries cut the share answering “yes” by nearly
one-half in the United States and one-third in Europe! 34
The declining breadth of advanced economies’
international interactions—even as they stretch
over greater geographic distances—reflects those
economies’ international interactions lagging the big
shift of economic activity to emerging economies. That
finding—based on our country-level analysis—accords
with research by others, showing how multinationals
from advanced economies are falling behind new rivals
from emerging economies. To offset limited depth and
falling breadth, companies—and countries—will need
to strengthen their capacity to bridge multiple types of
distance to tap into faraway growth.
The DHL Global Connectedness Index was designed to
be much more than a periodic ranking that celebrates
the world’s most connected countries. From its careful
tracking of actual interactions as distinct from their
enablers and impacts—to its exclusive reliance on hard
data—to the weights it assigns to different aspects of
globalization, it is meant to serve as a practical tool to
help countries and companies connect more effectively
to opportunities beyond their own borders. Its
performance through the global financial crisis provides
encouraging evidence of its value for business leaders
and policymakers.