In each country, private equity firms require on-the-ground knowledge, says Mr. Björklund, who is from Finland.
But, he added, Mr. Beale's on-the-ground knowledge of the overlooked byways of the country allowed him to "start from the bottom and show everyone the big picture from that perspective".
When asked what qualified him over candidates with backgrounds in finance, Kim cited Obama's mother's anthropology dissertation, about Indonesian artisans threatened by globalisation, to argue that there was no substitute for on-the-ground knowledge of economic policies' impact.
But in the judges' other roles they usually have wide discretion, both because they have on-the-ground knowledge of a case and because our judicial system would be overloaded if appellate courts routinely second-guessed trial-court judgments.
These writers are always locally based and are respected journalists in their community and it's their expertise and on-the-ground knowledge that makes the content of our guides so useful," it said.
Having first visited Iran in 1973, lived in Beirut in the 1980s and chronicled the region on repeated trips since then, she has a deep mix of on-the-ground knowledge, awareness of the historical background and step-back policy perspective.
This was a decision made by only a few men — specifically Bremer in his capacity as the head of the occupation authority, and his aide Walter Slocombe — and against the advice of just about everyone with any on-the-ground knowledge of the situation.
This can offer the inside-track on the local market, an established office infrastructure plus on-the-ground knowledge of the labyrinthine governmental regulations and red tape that may be encountered.
Harder to localize are health, weather, property, agriculture and catastrophe insurance products, which require more extensive on-the-ground knowledge in terms of not only a product's design, but also its administration and monitoring.
"By making it even easier to add to the map, we're increasing the amount of on-the-ground knowledge we can capture – further distancing OSM from the traditional map data companies and their lack of local expertise," Simon Poole, the chairman of the OpenStreetMap Foundation said in a canned statement today.
But unfortunately, North Korea still doesn't have much of the on-the-ground knowledge or expertise it needs to get itself out of the situations it's in.
