A quick look at the major media outlets, be they newspapers, magazines, websites, professional conferences or consulting engagements, highlights the global obsession with emerging markets. The rather large bloc of countries in South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia make up the loosely coined term emerging markets. Despite the geographic separation of these clusters of countries they share some very dominant and distinguishing characteristics.

Most of these countries were either socialist economies or controlled capitalist economies. They were closed from the global economy for a long time. All these countries are also characterized by substantial population levels, improvements in physical, intellectual and financial capital. Many of these countries have opened their economies to foreign direct investment and thereby taken a step towards a fuller integration with the global economy. As such, emerging economies seem very similar on many important dimensions.

Although many economies such as Brazil, Dubai, Turkey, and Bulgaria are aggressively developing their economies, it is usually Asia that manages to capture the global attention. Although at first glance such obsession can be waved aside as yet another media frenzy by a curious onlooker, a deeper analysis of the hard facts presents the tremendous evolution happening in the most important of all these emerging markets - Asia.

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