European startups may not enjoy as much publicity buzz as their counterparts based in Silicon Valley — but they are no less exciting. The whole startup scene in Europe is on a mission to catch up with the technology hotspots in the US. Some of the unique features of European companies, such as their multicultural and multilingual backgrounds, act as advantages when it comes to scaling up globally.

The life sciences industry is one of the most exciting places to be a globalization professional these days. By tearing a page from technology giants and top consumer brands, life sciences companies are discovering new ways to gather data and establish two-way conversations with patients and medical professionals about their products and the issues they address – all within the bounds of complex industry regulations.

Making a business case for localization is a lot easier today than it may have been in the past. The advantages of winning new customers or satisfying existing ones with products and content provided in their native language are obvious. That so many successful enterprises use localization to generate more than 50 percent of their revenues internationally is an argument that is hard to beat.

When Oscar Wilde quipped in his 1887 short story The Canterville Ghost, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language,” he was definitely onto something. The differences between British (UK) and American English, however small they appear to non-native speakers, stand out to natives on either side of the pond.

As pharmaceutical innovations become increasingly difficult and expensive to achieve – and as patents expire on blockbuster drugs – generic drug manufacturers have become one of the bright spots in the pharmaceutical industry. By developing "bioequivalent" medicines of original medicines for which patents have expired, these companies bypass many of the costs to bring original innovations to market, shaving 20-90% off the retail price of the drugs they resemble.

It's now two decades since the European Commission established the current regulatory framework for marketing medical devices in Europe. This framework – through the individual directives – has also defined the language and translation requirements for medical device labels.