The enormous pressure applied by the globalization process on the enterprises of all types and dimensions imposes continuous revisions of their growth (or merely survival) strategies. The areas more directly affected by the new ways of making industry are:

TRESAURY that is compelled, more and more every day, to seek for new forms of mid-term financing (as venture capitals, stock market, etc.) and, when possible, facilitated credits and contributions or grants.

TOP MANAGEMENT that, in order to maintain the actual and perspective competitiveness of the enterprise, must be involved in the acquisition of control shares, merge of companies, majority joint venture or adopt different growth strategies by external lines activating commercial agreements, products integration, co-operation in R & D programs, etc.

RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT that, due to the acceleration of the innovation (technology, process and product), must establish permanent links with external research structures and cannot be just satisfied by incremental innovations or imitative techniques like, in example, reverse engineering.

COMPANY ORGANIZATION (Operation): the increasing use of outsourcing revolutionizes the operation of the enterprise, shifting from the traditional structures to models known as "network companies" or "horizontal structures" with deep changes not only in the productive apparatus but also in product marketing, adoption of new components, technological research, new forms of access to capitals, utilization of new of services, etc.

The political, economic, technological changes happened in the last decade have deeply changed the operation of the Italian enterprises. Words like globalization and internationalization have become common terms that are used to describe the historical trend toward the economic unification of the world.

The inedited character of globalization, as we feel it today and as it will be still more obvious in the years to come, is determined by the interaction of four main components:
- increased liberalization of the markets in which the products - services are offered
- growth of direct and portfolio investments
- increased pace of technological and product innovation
- development of Information Technology, that has shattered the costs of long distance communication.

The above has determined an increased competition among enterprises, not only in new markets, but also in the traditional ones (local, regional and national) and this in turn has increased the transparency and permeability of the markets to new entries.

To increase the economy of scale (with the acquisition of new market shares) is a necessity determined by a wider international offer of production factors, the shortening of the products life cycle and the strong increase of Research and Development costs.