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In traditional location theory there is a distinction between factors of production for which the costs differ significantly between locations, on the one hand, and production inputs which are in practice available everywhere at more or less the same cost (i.e. so-called ubiquities) on the other.

In this article, we discuss the process whereby some previously important location factors are actively converted into ubiquities. With an admittedly rather horrendous term, we label this process ‘ubi-quitification’. It is argued that ubiquitification is the outcome of the ongoing globalization process as well as of a process whereby former tacit knowledge gradually becomes codified.

Ubiquitification tends to undermine the competitiveness of firms in the high-cost areas of the world. When international markets are opened up and when knowledge of the latest production technologies and organizational designs become globally available …