The world economy is changing rapidly, for companies, as well as for the goods and services they produce. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scale was often critical to success in international trade. Firms needed to be big in order to create integrated production systems, build global distribution networks, and cover the relatively high transport, communications and border costs associated with international trade. But as the world economy enters the twenty-first century, a number of important changes are diminishing the advantages of scale in international trade, with the result that smaller, nimbler “micro-multinationals” are also beginning to succeed in a global marketplace once overwhelmingly dominated by big multinationals. One important change is the dramatic lowering of trade costs. Traditionally, trade was often a costly, complex and time-consuming process. This meant that only large businesses—usually manufacturers or primary resource producers—could typically engage directly in global commerce because of the enormous organizational, financial and infrastructural investments required; smaller firms often lacked the resources to advertise in foreign markets, to ship and distribute overseas, and to navigate the complex and costly tariff and regulatory obstacles at the border. But today’s dramatically reduced trade barriers, improved transportation and telecommunications links, and breakthroughs in information technologies now make it possible for smaller companies—from software programmers to precision instrument manufacturers to boutique winemakers—to gain the global reach and market presence of larger companies at a significantly lower cost.