This is very important, very unappreciated point, to which I'd add that there's a legitimate fear that, within the organization, as your business infrastructure increases in size to handle international sales, your core business of making the product is a smaller part of the organization. The whole idea of "make great products" gets diffused in a situation like this: you now have sales-driven input coming in from a much wider market, with more competing directions. The core product team has to address a lot more stakeholders, and the domestic market that built them doesn't carry as much sway.

I worked for a company that turned down an offer by Walmart to become a top-tier vendor for them. We recognized we couldn't do it in our current form, and would need to rebuild ourselves from the ground up to handle the challenge. Many businesses took the opportunity: Vlassic Pickles most famously became a company 10x as large, but it was a completely different company afterwards, which the president noted was not without certain costs (basically, the family business destroyed, and replaced by being a part of the Walmart supercomplex). Many other companies tried to do the same thing and failed, effectively destroying the business in the process.

[Heh... Walmart as the Gom Jabbar of retail. "They tried and failed?" "They tried and died."]

Most of the comments here see this as entrenched interests trying to hold back the tide, but there are many businesses that don't survive the transition, and many more internal cultures that don't. It's a legitimate business choice to remain focussed on a domestic market one understands rather than gamble on international expansion.

Interesting point. I guess US print and media companies get globalization nearly for free because everyone wants to speak English.

There's a lot of people who want to speak Japanese though. Issues getting money into the country?