The question sounds simple, and it is being asked in more and more boardrooms: where will the next decade of growth come from? 

The home market is stagnating, market share is already high, the competition is fierce. The external growth engines are slowing down, too. Growth in the US is paralyzed by uncertainty. What is right and reasonable today can be completely outdated tomorrow, stalling many investment plans. China no longer produces the returns it did in the early 2000s, while concerns about IP protection, future access to company assets and profits, and geopolitical dynamics are reducing its appeal. 

Slowly, a conclusion settles in: if Europe, the US, and China no longer carry growth, companies have to look for it in new markets. 

This is not just a German conversation. The same meeting is taking place somewhere in Japan or Korea right now. Companies from any mature market are facing the same problem. Which is worth remembering, because all of them will compete for the same markets. 

Globalization is alive, with a new set of rules 

Let me say clearly what I believe, after more than thirty years of building businesses across Asia: globalization is not over. The necessity to grow pushes companies toward new sales markets, and competitiveness pushes them toward new markets to source from. Value chains will remain global. Tariffs may divert them to a certain degree, but not cut them. 

What has changed are the rules. Decoupling efforts, import and export restrictions designed to limit access to certain technologies or raw materials are threatening the old rules. Dependencies have become the grey rhino of international business: large, visible, and widely ignored. They threaten companies that only operate domestically, and even more so companies that want to grow internationally. Knowing your dependencies, and your alternatives, is no longer optional. 

And none of this replaces the difficulties that were already there: operating across different business cultures, market dynamics, and requirements. A distribution agreement in Osaka is still negotiated differently than one in Düsseldorf; a partner in Seoul still reads silence differently than one in Stuttgart. Silence does not necessarily mean agreement, someone might just be too friendly to say no or to interrupt. The new hurdles are added on top of the old ones, and they are remarkably similar in both directions, for German companies entering Asian markets and for Asian companies entering Germany. 

Which raises a question that gets far less attention than it deserves: where are all these layers, political, cultural, operational, actually managed? The answer is less obvious than it seems. 

The new market is won at home 

Here is the part I have seen decide success or failure more often than any market study: what happens in headquarters. 

Because, let's face it, most of the relevant decisions are taken in HQ: investment and headcount plans, product specifications and standards, pricing guidelines and business processes. Teams in HQ need to learn how they can best support and enable the overseas organization. Local management teams have to learn how to make themselves heard in HQ, and how to influence decisions in the right direction. That is how the trust is built that eventually allows decision-making authority to be delegated to local teams, and they are the ones who know the market best. 

Companies spend enormous time and energy analyzing the target market. In my experience, just as many expansions fail at home, quietly, in a product specification that was never adapted or a pricing guideline that was never questioned. 

Waiting is not the safe option 

In demanding times like ours, there is an understandable inclination to play it safe. To wait until the storm has passed and things are clearer. Unfortunately, there are no signs that this will happen any time soon. The longer companies wait to enter new markets, the more time their competitors have to take those markets first. Hesitation feels safe. It rarely is. 

The challenges of entering a new market, or of changing pace in an existing one, are enormous. But they can be cut into digestible slices, and worked through one by one, with the right people for each specific topic. 

We will not try to sell you a specific country. We will give you a neutral assessment of geopolitical developments, economic forecasts, and business potential, and analyze what it takes for your company to be successful. 

Why my son and I built Halusa Advisors for exactly this, we wrote down in our first article: Why We Founded Halusa Advisors.

And if some of the above rings a bell: reach out. We've heard it too.