In late April 2013, Jim O‘Neill retired as chairman of Goldman Sachs (GS). The 56-year-old British economist, among other accomplishments, left his mark on the still unfolding globalization story by coining the acronym BRIC, referring to the four rapidly developing nations—Brazil, Russia, India and China—that seemed ready a decade ago to challenge the economic supremacy of the United States, Japan, and Western Europe.Since O‘Neill invented the term in 2001, the BRICs have evolved in very different ways and have developed at very different rates. While China‘s economy continues to boom, though off its torrid pace of a few years ago, Russia‘s economic growth rate slowed last year to an estimated 3.4 percent, according to its Federal Statistics Service—down from 4.3 percent in 2011 and 4.5 percent the year before. Brazil‘s gross domestic product grew just 0.9 percent in 2012, while India‘s expanded at a 5 percent rate. As O‘Neill bows out, perhaps a bigger story than the BRICs today—one that deserves more attention in the board room—is the large number of countries that are now competing with the BRICs, even outpacing them, often for the same reasons the BRICs have done well. What this means, looking ahead, is that corporate executives, as they review their global plans, have more options than ever before available to them.

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