Going Global: Lessons from Late Movers
Conventional wisdom says that companies from the periphery of the global market can't compete against established global giants from Europe, Japan, and the United States. Companies from developing countries have entered the game too late; they don't have the resources. But Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal disagree. The problem for most aspiring multinationals from peripheral countries, say the authors, is that they enter the global marketplace in low-margin businesses at the bottom of the value curve, and they stay there. But it doesn't have to be that way. They studied 12 emerging multinationals based in such countries--from emerging markets like Brazil to relatively more prosperous yet still peripheral nations like Australia to developing countries like the Philippines. These companies now enjoy global success because they treated global competition as an opportunity to build capabilities and move into more profitable segments of their industry. The path to globalization isn't easy, but the authors show that it is possible. Each company in the study overcame the same core challenges. They broke out of the mind-set that they were unable to compete successfully on the global stage. They adopted strategies that made being a late mover a source of competitive advantage. They developed a culture of continual cross-border learning. And they all had leaders who drove them relentlessly up the value curve. The companies discussed in this article are models for the thousands of marginal companies in peripheral economies that have the potential to become legitimate global players.
{"Date First Available": "October 4, 2016"}