Global Strategy

The rapid growth of emerging economies, as well as ever-tighter trade, investment, and technology links between countries, is transforming the structure of the world economy. These changes are forcing even veteran global corporations such as IBM, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, and Schneider Electric to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions... read moreunderlying their global strategies. Concepts such as “domestic” vs. “foreign” markets are becoming rapidly obsolete as companies realize that the most effective way to engage with big emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil is to think of these as “home” markets in every sense of the word.

Given also the rapidly growing power - along with declining cost - of communications technologies, many young ventures now find that they can “go global” right from the very start. This is increasingly true not just for companies in the information and services sectors (such as Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn) but also for those selling physical goods such as clothing, toys, gardening tools, or auto parts. As a result, corporate leaders, in an increasingly large number of companies, find that they need to become astute at designing and implementing global strategies far earlier than was true for their predecessors only two decades ago.

These new developments are making global strategy an increasingly salient topic for companies of almost any size – Fortune 500 behemoths, mid-sized companies and young ventures. The talks in this series “unpack” the concept of global strategy and provide managers leading these companies, and students aspiring to such roles, with conceptual frameworks, examples, and action-oriented guidelines to address some of the most central questions related to the design and implementation of global strategies.