Dubbed the "major story of our lifetime," globalization describes the increased mobility of goods, services, labor, technology, ideas and capital as well as the integration of economies and societies worldwide.

With globalization comes an ever-growing number of global projects - projects that involve individuals, teams and organizations from diverse cultural contexts. Despite many nuanced differences - in scope, scale and sector - all global projects share a common theme: they unify participants from dissimilar societal systems. While the size of a project does not determine whether or not it is "global," CRGP research focuses on the kinds of global projects that are large enough to have regional, national and even trans-national economic, environmental and social impacts.

Examples of Large, Complex Global Projects

The Delhi Metro Rail project with funding from the Japanese Bank of International Cooperation, the Government of Delhi and the National Government of India and constructed by a consortium of international firms from Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the U.K.;

The 2008 Olympic Games organized by the Beijing Organizing Committee with more than 4,000 staff in 22+ departments looking after everything from venue planning to environmental management as well as coordinating with the International Olympic Committee and dozens of national Olympic committees;

Nation-building in Iraq sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and with local support from Arab, Muslim and Kurdish groups along with international assistance from allied forces, private contractors, and NGOs;

Relief efforts in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India, Thailand and other countries effected by the Asian Tsunami Disaster with support from NGOs like the Red Cross as well as from volunteers throughout the world;

"24 hour around-the-world-engineering" projects by high-tech companies with non-stop workflow sustained by work teams spaced at 8 hour time-zone intervals in locations such as India, the United Kingdom and the U.S.;

Peace-keeping operations in Kosovo sponsored by the United Nations with cooperation of local government agencies, surrounding national governments, international military forces, and international NGOs;

The Palm Island hotel and resort project in Dubai with vendors, contractors, sub-contractors, and suppliers participating from countries throughout the developed world and much of the labor force from Pakistan and India;

The Asian Highway Network supported by an intergovernmental agreement among 26 Asian nations that provides for new construction and upgrading along some 141,000 km. of roads linking Asia to Europe with an expected completion of 2010;