N ineteen ninety-two is the 35th anniversary of Business Horizons, the 500th anniversary of the European discovery (or rediscovery) of the “New World,” and the eve of the birth of the European Common Market. It is also an appropriate point to stop and reconsider the strength of the American industrial juggernaut vis-a-vis the continent with which, for much of its modern life, it has been irretrievably bound by inheritances of philosophical, political, and economic ties, as well as by the shared sacrifices of generations of citizens on both sides-in war and in emigration. As the year began, America was looking considerably more eastward, toward the Orient, than it was across the Atlantic. Europe was felt to be considerably better known. As Representative Gephardt’s sentiments reveal, for most Americans, Europe-that is, Western Europe-was most frequently thought of as a familiar, perhaps even somewhat tired, possibly even shopworn, collection of markets, which somehow or in some way would join together in the not-toodistant future to attempt to create a “I+ited States of Europe,” in obvious emulation of America’s own success. The American business press, although increasingly paying more attention to the emerging Economic Community (especially when its behavior could be portrayed as “Fortress Europe”) than was true of the general public, was also relatively sanguine about American industry’s future there, no matter how the market worked out. After all, weren’t American firms already Will entering the new European murket be the cakewalk American managers seem to think it will be? considerably more “pan-European” than their more nationalistic European rivals (Lipsey 1990)? And anyway, wasn’t the whole idea of Fortress Europe to keep the Japanese, not the Americans, out? Even a casual reading of America’s business press suggests a certain smugness regarding America’s ability to “deal” with its European cousins. Manufacturing was no exception to this arrogance. @e Machine l%at Changed the World (Womack et al. 1990) showed clearly that even though American automakers were well behind the Japanese in creating lean manufacturing organizations, the Europeans were often even worse. In a world dazzled by Japan’s ability to develop and commercialize an astonishing army of consumer products, European industrial science and technology was all but forgotten. The proliferation of McDonald’s into the very hearts of Paris and Rome was seen as vivid testimony to the ultimate superiority of American operational skills in the service areas. American business schools crowded onto the pages of i%e International Herald Tribune, trumpeting their products as if Europeans should naturally be interested in buying them. In short, even a close reading of the American scene could not dispel the notion that for most Americans, Europe was not only well known, but, also in terms of industrial competitiveness, the challenge was in the Pacific Basin, not in the “Old World.”