Originally Published MX November/December 2002

BUSINESS PLANNING & TECHNOLOGY

Deciding why is easy, but deciding where may not be.

Dennis W. Smith

Choosing where to locate a business operation is always a challenge. Siting
the facility outside the company's home country is not only more challenging,
but also more complex.

For example, while finding qualified staff is hard anywhere, the difficulty
is greater overseas, involving issues not previously considered: work visas,
home leave, State Department travel warnings, restrictions on women working
at night, employee intellectual property issues, and limits on ownership of
stock options being among them. In America a male boss does not give away his
female employee at her wedding, nor advise a staff member on whether he should
marry his girlfriend. In Asia, he very well might.

This article presents a model for site selection in the expansive, rich-with-potential region of the world we shall for convenience call the Asia-Pacific region: eastern and southern Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Why Go to Asia-Pacific Countries?