But nobody ever said world trade was going to be easy!

The luxury of a huge, rich domestic market seemingly buffered by two oceans kept U.S. business from having to be as competitive as European and Asian counterparts in looking beyond their borders.

In his astute new book on globalism, The World is Flat, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman succinctly sets out the various factors that are turning the planet's economies inside-out. Readers of World Trade will be familiar with his list: Internet communication, outsourcing, off-shoring, synchronized supply chains. What they may not fully appreciate is the extent which, according to Friedman, these different elements have already converged past the tipping point of no return.

The net result, Friedman writes, will be "the creation of a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration-the sharing of knowledge and work-in real time, without regard to geography, distance, or, in the near future, even language." A playing field "open to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it ever before in the history of the world."

To repeat, nobody said it was going to be easy.

The first truth is that nearly everything in this new economy ultimately intersects with the supply chain. What 'air' is to the atmosphere, the supply chain is to globalization. The old ways of moving products and materials, when there was a clear division between international and domestic, isn't going to get the job done much longer.

Peter Koudal, Director of Global Manufacturing at Deloitte Research, points out that a disturbing number of companies aren't realizing an acceptable return on their off-shore investments. The reason? They commonly fail to formulate a holistic strategy early in the product development process that addresses future supply chain considerations; instead of the all too common ad hoc supply chain strung together after-the-fact, Koudal advocates attention to "network optimization" right from the get-go.

On a related front, PRTM Consulting's Roger Wery surveyed several hundred WORLD TRADE C-level readers about globalization, a third of whom have implemented at least one product development involving a significant portion of overseas resources. Wery, too, counsels holistic supply chain strategies that look beyond the immediate cost-savings of labor to include such other factors as time to market, stability of talent and prior experience in outsourcing.

That's the 'value add' we like to render at WORLD TRADE-advance warning to help smooth out some of the rough patches along the way as the supply chains of American enterprise go global.