Today, it's hard to imagine a GE Plastics that didn't have offices, suppliers, customers and employees in every corner of the globe. But as recently as the early 1980s, that was the case. Globalization is now about 15 years old, and less an initiative than a reflex.

Globalization isn't only striving to grow revenues by selling goods and services in global markets - we've already made huge inroads by expanding our customer base in Europe and Asia. And it's not only globalizing every activity of the company - we've already started to expand our network of suppliers by closing deals in Russia, India and China.

Globalization also means finding and attracting the unlimited pool of intellectual capital - the very best people - from all around the globe: metallurgists in Prague, software engineers in Asia, product designers in Budapest, Monterrey, Tokyo, and Paris.

By relying on such a diversity of talent, we increase the number of ideas flowing through GEP. Every part of this initiative is based on bringing world-class business and work practices and careful, compliant and proactive environmental processes to every one of our global operations.

After all, being a truly great global company means being a truly great local citizen.