Customer Reviews
Careful Documentation of What Companies Based in Emerging Markets Are Doing to Compete Everywhere - By: Donald Mitchell, 04 Sep 2008 
Globality is an excellent book for corporate executives, business unit leaders, & entrepreneurs. If you are an investor or want to read about the culture of world business, this isn't going to be your cup of tea.
We arein the middle of the great business convergence, an event so epochal that it will be written about as one of the great turning pointsin world history over the next several hundred years. What's it all about? Simply, every organization will complete with virtually every other organization on the planet. In the process, the dominant companies of the 21st century will be built.
In Globality, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) partners Harold Sirkin, James Hemerling, & Arindam Bhattacharya take the view primarily from enterprises foundedin China, India, Brazil, & Mexico to show how those with the fewest resources, least skills, but lowest costs, are building important global positionsin major industries. I compared this writing to what BCG founder Bruce D. Henderson used to writein the 1960s about Japanese, Korean, & Taiwanese companies being poised to deflate profits for companiesin the U.S. & Europe, & I was pleased to see that Globality is much more articulate, better defined, & easier to understand.
Although the book is very much about the evidence brought by the challengers, the information is presented neutrallyin terms of describing opportunities available for anyone. In addition, there are specific suggestions for what well established companiesin developed countries might do to best take advantage of these opportunities.
For me, the best parts were the case histories of companiesin China & India that I don't know much about. You'll find many interesting stories.
In terms of analyzing the opportunities, the major themes are:
(1) Minding the Cost Gap
(2) Growing Human Capabilities
(3) Reaching Deeper into Markets
(4) Geographically Pinpointing Resources & Capabilities
(5) Thinking Big
(6) Acting Fast
(7) Getting Help from Outside
(8) Innovating the Business Model
(9) Embracing Global Diversity
(10) Being Prepared to Attack Everywhere & Be Attacked from Everywhere
The chapter titlesin the book aren't quite this clear. You'll have to read the material to grasp the key concepts, but you'll get it.
I liked that the book has strategic, organizational, & tactical dimensions. If you want to get a quick look at the overall themes, head to page 239 to read the Nokia story & to page 249 to read the Emerson story.
How to thrive in an ecosystem of business opportunity - By: Robert Morris, 19 Jun 2008 With regard to the title, Harold Sirkin, James Hemerling, & Arindam Bhattacharya explain that "globality [is] the name for a new & different realityin which we'll all be competing with everyone, from everywhere, for everything." In a global business environment that Thomas Friedman characterizes as having become "flat," it is also possible (albeit theoretically) for companies to forge a strategic alliance with anyone, anywhere. They go on to suggest that as a new era emerges, "we call it globality, a different kind of environment,in which business flowsin every direction. Companies have no centers. The idea of foreignness is foreign. Commerce swirls & market dominance shifts. Western business orthodoxy entwines with eastern business philosophy & creates a whole new mind-set that embraces profit & competition as well as sustainability & collaboration. Globality is a blockbuster new script - action, drama, suspense, & road picture all packed into one - with a sprawling cast of characters & locationsin every corner of the world."
Sirkin, Hemerling, & Bhattacharya explain why & how a "tsunami" wave of competition from global challengers (i.e. rapidly developing companies) has risen up & challenged established players, what they call "incumbents." In fact, developed companies now find themselves struggling to compete successfullyin terms of cost differentials; "growing people" & then positioning themin proper alignment; market penetration; "pinpointing" (i.e. connecting with customers, distributing complexity, & reinventing the business model); rapid growth (by scaling up, building brands, filling capability gaps, & bartering); innovating with ingenuity; & embracing "manyness" (i.e. many countries, economies, markets, locations, & facilities but no centers, no home markets, no foreignness, or hierarchy of location). New mind-sets are needed if incumbents are to respond effectively to these & other challenges.
Each of the co-authors is a senior-level executive with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and, together, they have dozens of years of close association & direct involvement with a number of companies - & have accumulated extensive research data on many other companies - among the "BCG Challenger 100." Thirty-four of these companies provide industrial goods, 17 are resource extractors, 14 make consumer durables, another 14 offer food, beverage, & cosmetic products, four make technical equipment. The remaining 17 operatein a wide variety of fields that include pharmaceuticals, mobile communication services, shipping, & infrastructure. For me, the most important materialin this book is provided as the co-authors examine specific challenger companies & suggest what lessons can be learned from their initiatives. They include BYD, Johnson Electric, Wipro, ICICI Bank, Embraer, Barat Forge, Cipla, Tata Consulting Services, & Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M). As I read about them, I was reminded of Jack Welch's remarks during a GE annual meeting years ago when he explained the competitive advantages of such challenger companies:
"For one, they communicate better. Without the din & prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; & since there are fewer of them they generally know & understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitationin the marketplace. Third,in small companies, with fewer layers & less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance & its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less timein endless reviews & approvals & politics & paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy & attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy." Welch could well have been describing the mind-sets at ZTE, a challenger that competes successfully with incumbents that include Ericsson, Nokia, Alcatel, Siemens, & Motorola. Ten thousand of its 31,000 employees are engineers & their average age is 30. Like so many other challenger companies, ZTE is outgrowing the imitation stage, investing heavilyin 14 research & development centersin China, the U.S. India, France, & Sweden. Its leaders are determined to participatein global standard setting, with ZTE having already applied for more than 5,000 national & international patents. If the cycle continues, ZTE will eventually become an incumbent & then struggle to compete successfully with challengers who may not even bein business today.
When concluding their book, Sirkin, Hemerling, & Bhattacharya assert (and I wholly agree) that however much the global business community has changed & will continue to change, essentially the measures of success will remain the same. Business leaders will continue to think about their placein the world, about sustainability & scarce resources. Those the co-authors interviewed "always talk about their dreams. They speak about people they have known,in their factories & boardrooms, retail outlets, & warehouses. They talk about their companies as if they were families. Above all, they say they want their personal & professional lives to be meaningful & rich journeys. They want to build something. And they want it to endure."
Meanwhile, the "tsunami" continues to surge....
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out Friedman's aforementioned The World Is Flat 3.0 & The Quest for Global Dominance by Anil K. Gupta, Vijay Govindarajan, & Haiyan Wang as well as Victor Fung, William Fung, & Yoram (Jerry) Wind's Competingin a Flat World, C.K. Prahalad's The Borderless World (Revised Edition) & The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Kenichi Ohmae's The Next Global Stage, & Vijay Mahajan & Kamini Banga's The 86 Percent Solution.
