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Globalization in reverse or how localization might look like.
A version of this article was published in the World Economic Forum.
Few know that perhaps the single most important factor that enabled the growth of globalization was a very practical thing — the invention of a container.
Malcom Purcell McLean invented metal shipping container in 1956, which fundamentally revolutionized shipping and transportation globally. Until then everything was handled using break bulk method, meaning that goods, material, and pretty much everything else was loaded on a ship, one by one, in various sizes, boxes, drums or barrels — a process which was incredibly time consuming and inefficient.
Containerization — that is, the standardization of loading, handling and transporting — made shipping things from one side of the world to another incredibly cheap, easy and well manageable. This ushered the world into the era of globalization, and for the next five decades or so, the envy of business achievement was to source inputs cheaply…
