From small things: Brazil, Russia, India and China--the emerging world's big dogs--are starting to get attention.

The alphabet soup of corporate sales geographies is amusing enough. Somehow, companies combine cultures as distinct as Europe, the Middle East and Africa into a single area (EMEA). Others talk of the developing world as if it were still on a 17th century map: Oceania is a coherent place from Japan to New Zealand to Hawaii, while Latin America often means everything-but-Mexico (that's in North America now, of course), and many who manage Brazil are asked to also manage neighboring Argentina (reasonable) while the Chile manager must encompass Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela to boot (a stretch at best).

Now some companies are really bending the concept: They are beginning to take seriously managing Brazil, Russia, India and China as a single unit. Perhaps it's just an idea, but in four decades, experts predict, the four emerging giants' combined economies could be far larger than the total output of the G6 countries, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy. Known as the BRIC economies, their combined gross domestic product could hit US$84.20 trillion in 2050 compared to $54.43 trillion for the G6, according to a Goldman Sachs report. The BRIC four will post just $3.34 trillion in economic output this year.

"We look at the BRIC countries as a proxy for emerging markets. They represent 40% of the world's population. Being able to participate in these markets is a pretty exciting opportunity for HP," says Richard Walker, vice president of emerging countries at the U.S. tech giant.

Walker's job in part is to develop a multi-year strategic plan for the bloc. To participate in these markets, HP has put design centers in the four countries so that the company can deliver new products to those markets rapidly. "We have to have that speed in the country directly to compete at certain strike points and keep our presence in the marketplace" Walker says.

For other companies, it's the sheer lack of development that's most intriguing. Scott Handy, vice president for Linux worldwide at IBM, says that one reason these countries are growing quickly is their flexibility. "They are open to any type of infrastructure because they don't have one yet. They are free from the cost and don't feel locked in with closed-source technology," Handy says.

Given that flexibility, solutions developed in one country can migrate quickly to the others, Handy says. For instance, an e-government program to provide public services via the Web started in India, then spread to other countries. "Once the government found that successful, that started a nationwide e-government initiative," Handy says. "People realized this was valuable and we started expanding from there into Brazil and other countries. We can even apply the things we learned to developed countries."

There are some risks, managers say, before the predicted growth boom can really take hold. "We are talking about markets that have a great deal of uncertainty to them," says Rodrigo Abreu, president of Canadian communications equipment supplier Nortel in Brazil. "We still have to go through several rounds of changes, formulation of policies, and achieve stability in terms of trade and political stability overall."

Income distribution--lopsided historically and likely to improve only slowly--is another challenge. "To create a consumer market, you have to include a larger part of the population" Abreu says.

Sophisticated. Like companies, investors too have looked to emerging countries as a good strategy for higher returns. Nevertheless, financial advisers say small investors should proceed with caution. "If you are already a sophisticated investor, you should make sure your portfolio has at least 10% exposure in these markets," says Danielle Hughes, president and CEO of Divine Capital Markets. "Don't just think that you can invest in anything within these countries and it will do well."

Nevertheless, says Linda Yueh, economics fellow at Pembroke College at Oxford, these new, larger emerging economies make it clear that the world is increasingly driven by a global economy, and one that promises significant opportunities. Says Yueh: "Not going into these countries wouldn't be a feasible option."

RACHEL HATZIPANAGOS * MIAMI