Abstract: We present the global k-means algorithm which is an incremental approach to clustering that dynamically adds one cluster center at a time through a deterministic global search procedure consisting of N (with N being the size of the data set) executions of the k-means algorithm from suitable initial positions. We also propose modi2cations of the method to reduce the computational load without signi2cantly a3ecting solution quality. The proposed clustering methods are tested on well-known data sets and they compare favorably to the k-means algorithm with random restarts.