For companies looking to expand internationally, business networks can play a key role in identifying and implementing foreign market opportunities. Finding the right distribution or manufacturing partner or identifying an opportunity to acquire a chain of retail stores, for example, can influence the decision on which markets to enter. Business networks, however, are not the […]
Read More… from Investing Abroad? Use Your Country’s Diplomats
Many multi-national enterprises (MNEs) will re-enter a foreign market that they had previously decided to leave. A new study, based on an analysis of more than 1,000 foreign market re-entry events between 1980 and 2016, explores the factors that push some MNEs to re-enter a previously exited market within a short period of time — […]
Read More… from Re-Entering a Foreign Market: Part 2 – Speed
In 2009, French retailer Carrefour exited the Algerian market after finding its joint venture with a local partner to be unprofitable. Six years later, Carrefour re-entered the market with a different joint venture partner. In 2012, South Africa’s SAB Miller Plc. exited the Brazilian market, abandoning its distribution partnership. Three years later, it re-entered the […]
Read More… from Re-Entering a Foreign Market: Part 1 – Operation Mode
In 1980, the U.S. freight railroad industry was deregulated. Railroad companies now had the freedom to abandon unprofitable lines and acquire new ones. They were also no longer banned from owning other modes of transportation, notable road and water transportation; the companies thus gained access to previously inaccessible markets that had been reserved for road […]
Read More… from Industry Disruption: Sequence and Timing of Responses Are the Key to Survival
What influence does a CEO’s personality have on the major strategic decisions of his or her firm? To answer this question, a team of researchers studied the impact of a CEO’s extraverted or introverted nature on his or her company’s M&A activities. The team focused on extraversion as a personality trait because of the ‘big […]
A company in the facility engineering industry took on a large and complex project that presented both technical challenges and was subject to legal regulations that affected customer requirements. Unfortunately, the steering committee (SC) in charge of the project never really understood the key trade-offs and risks in the project. Unaware of the technical or […]
Read More… from Supervising Projects Despite Limited Time and Expertise
In the annual global MIT/Deloitte survey of executives and managers, 90% of respondents recognized that digital trends would disrupt their industries. Only 44%, however, believed their organizations were prepared for the disruption. Parsing the data in the survey returns, the MIT/Deloitte team were able to divide the companies of respondents into three categories: early-stage, developing, […]
Read More… from Aligning Your Organization for the Digital Future
Companies have both short-term and long-term responsibilities: they must be successful in the present while preparing for the future. While many companies believe they are managing these two priorities effectively, in truth, the urgency of the exploiting the present — launching marketing campaigns, resolving customer service issues or managing the supply chain, for example — […]
Read More… from Build Ambidextrous Teams to Combine Present and Future Objectives
If you’re a national or international company with marketing authority and practices spread across various locations, or if you have a diversified group of products or businesses that call for different marketing approaches, how can you maintain a consistent marketing strategy that is aligned with the company’s overall priorities while still giving local functions the […]
Read More… from How a Marketing Doctrine Overcomes the Flexibility Vs Consistency Conundrum
The word ‘scenarios’ has many different meanings in a variety of fields and disciplines. In strategic planning, scenarios refer to a small set of carefully structured and tailored narratives about the future context a company or an industry might inhabit. These narratives are developed through interviews and workshops with a broad range of stakeholders related to the focal […]
Read More… from The Power of Scenarios to Open New Perspectives
