This article is adapted from remarks shared by Orbit Ventures Managing General Partner William Bao Bean in conversation with Alexander Bebov, Founder of BAC Group, at SuperReturn Emerging Markets.
Globalization Is Not Ending. It Is Reconfiguring.
Much of today’s discussion about the global economy is framed around deglobalization. Supply chains are shifting, geopolitical tensions are reshaping trade relationships, and capital is becoming more selective about where it flows. Taken together, these developments can create the impression that globalization is retreating.
William Bao Bean believes the reality is more nuanced.
Rather than the end of globalization, we are witnessing a reconfiguration of how globalization works. Capital and trade are no longer flowing through a single dominant center. Instead, they are increasingly moving through interconnected networks where value is created and captured across multiple regions simultaneously.
This shift is particularly visible across emerging markets. New trade and investment corridors are forming directly between Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Africa is strengthening ties with Gulf economies. Latin America is deepening its commercial relationships with Asia. The Middle East is becoming an increasingly important bridge connecting multiple regions.
What appears to be fragmentation from a distance is often the formation of a more distributed and resilient global system. The question for investors is no longer whether globalization is weakening. It is how value will be created within this new structure.
What Actually Drives Outcomes in Emerging Markets
As investors navigate this changing landscape, a common question emerges: what will matter most over the next five years? Will portfolio performance be driven primarily by geopolitics, evolving LP mandates, or local operational expertise?
The answer is that none of these forces operate independently.
Geopolitics defines the constraints within which businesses and investors must operate. LP mandates influence where capital can flow and what outcomes are prioritized. Local execution determines whether a strategy can succeed on the ground. Portfolio outcomes emerge from the interaction of all three.
At the same time, the expectations attached to capital are evolving. Development finance institutions that historically emphasized impact metrics are placing greater weight on financial performance. Meanwhile, sovereign investors that traditionally focused on returns are increasingly expected to demonstrate economic development and strategic value creation within their own markets.
While the balance may vary by institution and geography, the direction is clear: capital is converging toward a blended mandate that values both returns and broader economic outcomes.
Yet despite these shifts, one principle remains unchanged. Execution continues to be the binding constraint. Markets, mandates, and capital flows may evolve, but companies only scale when operators successfully navigate local realities.
Why Volatility Favors Connected Platforms
Volatility is often described as a risk to be managed. In emerging markets, it is better understood as a permanent feature of the operating environment.
Capital enters and exits markets. Governments change policies. Currencies fluctuate. Economic cycles expand and contract. These dynamics are not exceptions; they are recurring characteristics of the landscape.
The implication is that investors should not build strategies around the assumption of stability. Instead, they should build systems capable of operating through change.
This is one reason diversification across markets matters. Cross-border exposure can help absorb shocks that might significantly impact a single country. More importantly, connectivity between markets creates optionality. Companies can access new customers, new suppliers, new partners, and new sources of growth when conditions change in any one geography.
For William, this perspective is central to the long-term case for emerging markets. Capital remains significantly underallocated relative to the growth potential of these economies. Volatility may discourage short-term investors, but it also creates opportunities for those willing to build through cycles rather than react to them.
The Pincer Effect: Combining Local Roots With Global Reach
One of the most persistent debates in venture capital is whether local managers or global platforms are better positioned to win in emerging markets.
William sees this as a false choice.
Local investors and operators possess advantages that cannot easily be replicated. They understand regulatory environments, cultural dynamics, customer behavior, and the practical realities of execution. These insights are often essential to identifying opportunities and helping companies navigate their earliest stages of growth.
At the same time, local expertise alone is not always sufficient to unlock scale.
Global platforms bring a different set of capabilities: long-standing relationships with multinational corporations, access to broader networks of investors and partners, and experience helping companies expand across borders. Regional connectivity adds another layer, enabling successful models to move between adjacent markets facing similar challenges.
The strongest approach combines all three.
William describes this as a type of pincer effect. Local partners provide market-level insight and execution. Regional networks create pathways for expansion. Global relationships unlock distribution, corporate partnerships, and knowledge transfer that would otherwise be difficult to access.
Scale, in this model, is not simply the result of growing within a single market. It emerges from connecting multiple markets into a broader system.
Ecosystems, Monetization, and the Transfer of Innovation
This system-level perspective also shapes how Orbit thinks about value creation.
From the outside, a portfolio spanning multiple countries and sectors can appear highly diversified, even disconnected. Yet beneath the surface, many of these companies are linked through shared customers, business models, distribution channels, and monetization strategies.
In this sense, ecosystems become the real unit of value.
A useful example is fintech. Investors often treat fintech as a standalone sector, but in many emerging markets it functions more accurately as a monetization layer for the broader economy. Companies may begin by digitizing agriculture, logistics, retail, supply chains, or small businesses. As these platforms grow, financial services become the mechanism through which value is ultimately captured.
Payments, credit, insurance, and embedded finance frequently emerge as natural extensions of businesses that initially had little to do with financial technology. Fintech succeeds not because it exists independently, but because it sits on top of other forms of digitization.
The same logic applies to the transfer of proven business models across regions.
William points to the refurbished smartphone market as an example. Earlier generations of companies in China demonstrated that value could be created not only through refurbishing and reselling devices, but also by preloading software, integrating services, and participating in downstream revenue streams. The result was a shift from a simple hardware business to a platform model with multiple layers of monetization.
Orbit has supported founders adapting similar concepts across Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. While each company operates within its own local context, they benefit from shared lessons, sourcing relationships, and operating knowledge developed across multiple markets.
This is what William refers to as innovation arbitrage: not copying Silicon Valley, but transferring proven models between emerging markets where similar structural challenges exist.
When these systems work, value compounds across the ecosystem. When they break down, the challenge is often not demand but connectivity. Regulatory barriers, fragmented supply chains, or restrictions on cross-border flows can prevent the system from assembling in the first place.
Scale First, Exits Second
Questions about exits inevitably arise whenever emerging markets are discussed.
William argues that investors often ask the question too early.
The same concerns were raised in China years ago. Similar questions emerged in India. Today they continue to surface across many emerging markets. Yet the underlying pattern remains remarkably consistent.
Exits follow scale.
As ecosystems mature, companies gain access to a broader range of liquidity pathways, including public markets, strategic acquisitions, private equity transactions, and regional consolidation. In some cases, profitable businesses that lack natural local buyers ultimately find liquidity through combinations with similar companies operating in adjacent markets.
Rather than viewing exits as isolated events, William sees them as indicators of system maturity. When ecosystems become sufficiently connected and companies reach meaningful scale, liquidity mechanisms begin to emerge naturally.
The focus, therefore, should be on building the conditions that enable scale rather than attempting to engineer exits prematurely.
The Opportunity Is Bigger Than Any Single Market
At its core, the emerging markets opportunity is not about any single country, sector, or investment theme.
It is about connectivity.
Local investors provide context. Founders provide execution. Global investors contribute networks and market access. Corporates bring distribution and commercial relationships. Each participant plays a different role, but none is sufficient on its own.
The opportunity lies in connecting these layers into systems that allow companies to scale across borders, transfer knowledge, and create value beyond the limits of individual markets.
This is why William remains optimistic about the long-term outlook for emerging markets. The challenge is not a lack of opportunity. If anything, capital remains dramatically underallocated relative to the scale of economic growth taking place across these regions.
What matters is building the infrastructure, relationships, and ecosystems that allow that opportunity to compound.
What looks like fragmentation today is often the early stage of a larger process of integration.
We are not witnessing the end of globalization. We are watching a new version of it take shape — one built on networks rather than centers, connectivity rather than concentration, and ecosystems rather than isolated markets.
The investors who understand those systems will be best positioned to participate in the next generation of value creation.
