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The IMF publication, Finance and Development, recently published data about globalization that puts into perspective the dramatic advances the global trading community has made in the last century thanks to information technology. For example, in 1960 a three-minute transatlantic phone call from New York to London cost $60.42. Today, the same call costs less than half a dollar. An investment of $1,000 into a computer and related peripherals today would have cost around $1.9 million back in 1960 (and take up quite a bit more landscape). It’s hard to imagine the life of an information technology researcher back in 1960, much less anyone looking at whatever “global” IT issues may have existed then. How is it that any products or services even crossed national frontiers given the barriers to the free flow of information that existed? The risk factors in international trade and the complications in bringing buyers and sellers together in a mutually trustworthy environment were close to insurmountable. While we have come a long way since the 1960s, there still are numerous risks interfering with the seamless exchange of products, services and information across national frontiers. Lest we make the same mistake that John Kenneth Galbraith made in the 1950s when he stated that “the problem of production has been solved”-an assertion the Japanese turned on its head in the sixties, seventies and eighties-I would like to use this opportunity to comment about the risks associated with globalization and how information technology might be used to reduce some of those risks. As Associate Editor for the journal’s manufacturing and R&D submissions, I …