Living life: Go Glocal

The virtues of globalization in the 21st century where the internet has turned the world into a global village have spurred human civilization into the future but within it, humans have realized a need for local identities within the global village. Hence, the challenge to grow globally but remain local has bred the new era of glocalization, this being the relationship between local and global. This has brought up the maxim, think Globally, but Act Locally. Think about Google, the global internet search engine that tells you anything you want in the world, now available in Kinyarwanda or Swahili. What about facebook, the Harvard born social networking sensation being used by Rwandan students to connect to each other and get friends not in America, but in other Rwanda universities, offices to offices and the list goes on. Glocalization, the word, comes from the Japanese word dochakuka, which simply means global localization. Originally referring to a way of adapting farming techniques to local conditions, dochakuka evolved into a marketing strategy when Japanese businessmen adopted it in the 1980s. “The term “glocal” refers to the individual, group, division, unit, organization, and community which are willing and able to “think globally and act locally.” In this era, each of us must be able to assimilate into the global community. We are expected to know that 33 miners are stuck in a mine in Chile and at the same time that a Chinese dissident who is in jail in China has just been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize by a Norwegian Nobel academy and at the same time, be aware that a road construction works at Sopetrad has caused a traffic diversion. The global community is made up of many local communities and that realization affects business, culture and political considerations. Many companies now consider glocalization in their marketing campaigns, trying to appeal more to specific needs and interests of specific communities instead of using one blanket global message that may apply elsewhere but not everywhere. It is the creation of products or services intended for the global market, but customized to suit the local cultures. Products or services that are effectively “glocalized” are, by definition, going to be of much greater interest to the end user. For example yahoo which most of us use, markets a portal that is viewed worldwide and offers different versions of its website for different users by providing content and language variations in some 25 countries and also customizes content to appeal to individuals in those locations. Without knowing it we are already going glocal. As individuals doing our jobs, running our businesses or organizations and in whatever we do, if we aspire to go global at one point in time, must consciously start exploring ways of glocalizing so that we can think global and act local. We can have one eye on the world and still keep our local territories in focus. Today, I wish you a glocal Sunday. kelviod@yahoo.com