Recognizing the dearth of attention afforded to global cities in the international business and management journals, Goerzen et al. (J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013) chanced their hand at becoming pioneers. Their gamble paid off. Taking geographic scale down to the city level, questioning why multinationals choose to locate subsidiaries inside or outside of global cities, they jump-started their own conversation, sugaring the pill with the IB staple—liability of foreignness. So well was their inquiry crafted and executed that their insights into the way global connectedness attracts investment into these cities remains instructive. Since then, global cities and firms have undergone a transition. We visualize increasingly multifaceted cities interacting with firms accelerating towards adopting an “ecosystem approach”—characterized by extensive non-equity collaborations and partnerships. We explain why investigation à la Goerzen et al. (J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013) today must grasp multinationals’ diverse relationships to revivify theoretical insights from economic geography for a world of tensions heightened by geopolitics, but above all grappling with the sustainability agenda. We conclude that within an ecosystem of feedback effects, multinationals’ agency can be part of the solution. To deliver, IB must harness emerging novel geographic—“big”—data and techniques to match, in the spirit of the imaginative fusion a decade earlier.

Goerzen 等人认识到国际商业和管理期刊对全球城市缺乏关注。 （J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013）他们偶然成为了先驱。他们的赌博得到了回报。将地理范围缩小到城市层面，质疑跨国公司为何选择在全球城市内外设立子公司，他们开始了自己的对话，并用IB的主要内容——外国责任——来为药丸加糖。他们的调查设计和执行得非常出色，以至于他们对全球连通性如何吸引投资进入这些城市的见解仍然具有指导意义。从那时起，全球城市和企业经历了转变。我们想象日益多元化的城市与加速采用“生态系统方法”的企业互动——其特点是广泛的非股权合作和伙伴关系。我们解释了为什么要进行 Goerzen 等人的调查。 （J Int Bus Stud 44(5):427–450, 2013）今天必须掌握跨国公司的多元化关系，以复兴经济地理学的理论见解，应对地缘政治加剧的紧张世界，但最重要的是应对可持续发展议程。我们的结论是，在反馈效应的生态系统中，跨国公司的代理机构可以成为解决方案的一部分。为了实现这一目标，IB 必须本着十年前富有想象力的融合精神，利用新兴的新颖地理“大”数据和技术进行匹配。