Major shifts in cost competitiveness around the world over the past decade are starting to spur a number of companies to change their global sourcing and manufacturing investment strategies, according to The Boston Consulting Group's report, The Shifting Economics of Global Manufacturing: How Cost Competitiveness Is Changing Worldwide.

These are challenging times for emerging markets. China's economy is expanding at the slowest pace in more than a decade, and annual growth in once-booming nations like Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa has slowed to about 1.5 to 2.5 percent. Look around the developing world, and currencies are weakening, worries about asset bubbles and rising debt are mounting, and foreign direct investment has fallen sharply. This volatility leaves many companies wondering if they are overexposed to the risks of emerging markets.

A lot of people view China business as mysterious. Relax. Consumers behave pretty much the same everywhere. Competition is pretty much the same everywhere. You just need to ignore the hype and focus on the basic fact that in China today, there are six big trends. That's it. Six trends shape most of the country’s industries and drive much of China's impact on the Western world.

Hong Kong has maintained its status as the world's freest economy, a distinction that it has achieved for 20 consecutive years. The nomination was made in the 20th anniversary edition of the Index of Economic Freedom, published jointly by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.

Over the last few years, the conventional wisdom has coalesced around a view that success in emerging markets is primarily a function of outstanding execution - speed, opportunism, tenacity, and guile - instead of a well-thought-out strategy supported by a set of winning and difficult-to-replicate organizational capabilities. In other words, street smarts are supposed to beat MBA smarts every time.

With much of Europe still struggling to recover from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, Poland stands out as an unlikely island of economic success, a place where companies and individuals plan for growth rather than decline.