Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter [Hardcover]

Pankaj Ghemawat (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1591398665 | ISBN-13: 978-1591398660 | Publication Date: September 27, 2007 | Edition: 1

Why do so many global strategies fail—despite companies’ powerful brands and other border-crossing advantages? Seduced by market size, the illusion of a borderless, “flat” world, and the allure of similarities, firms launch one-size-fits-all strategies.

But cross-border differences are larger than we often assume, explains Pankaj Ghemawat in Redefining Global Strategy. Most economic activity—including direct investment, tourism, and communication—happens locally, not internationally.

In this “semiglobalized” world, one-size-fits-all strategies don’t stand a chance. Companies must instead reckon with cross-border differences. Ghemawat shows you how—by providing tools for:

· Assessing the cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic differences between countries at the industry level and deciding which ones merit attention.

· Tracking the implications of particular border-crossing moves for your company’s ability to create value.

· Creating superior performance with strategies optimized for adaptation (adjusting to differences), aggregation (overcoming differences), and arbitrage (exploiting differences), and for compound objectives.

In-depth examples reveal how companies such as Cemex, Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Tata Consultancy Services, IBM, and GE Healthcare have adroitly managed cross-border differences—as well as how other well-known companies have failed at this challenge.

Crucial for any business competing across borders, this book will transform the way you approach global strategy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...a reasoned guide. --The Financial Times, October 11, 2007

This book deserves to be a bestseller. --The Economist, November 1, 2007

...Ghemawat warns...that businesses suffer when they follow such globalization logic too far. The real state of the world is neither globalized nor local...It is semiglobalized, and will remain so for decades to come. --Reuters News, December 13, 2007

About the Author

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School in Barcelona and the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor (on leave) at Harvard Business School. His Harvard Business Review article Regional Strategies for Global Leadership won the McKinsey Award in 2005.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (September 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591398665
• ISBN-13: 978-1591398660
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pankaj Ghemawat is the Anselmo Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at IESE Business School. Between 1983 and 2006, he served on the faculty at the Harvard Business School where, in 1991, he became the youngest person in the school's history to be appointed a full professor. And before that, he earned his A.B. degree in Applied Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard.

Ghemawat was also the youngest "guru" included in the guide to the greatest management thinkers of all time published in 2008 by The Economist. His books include Commitment, Games Businesses Play, Strategy and the Business Landscape and the award-winning Redefining Global Strategy, which The New York Times called " a nicely revised picture of globalization as regionalization."

He is the author of more than 100 research articles and case studies, ranks as one of the world's best-selling authors of teaching cases, and has been elected a fellow of the Academy of International Business and of the Strategic Management Society. Other recent honors include the McKinsey Award for the best article published in the Harvard Business Review and the Irwin Award for the Educator of the Year from the Business Policy and Strategy division of the Academy of Management.

Ghemawat is active in helping companies, governments, multilateral institutions, and business schools better understand and address international opportunities and challenges. He consults on strategy and leadership development around the world and is a regular speaker on globalization-related topics. He also served on the taskforce appointed by the AACSB, the U.S.-based accreditation body for business schools, on the Globalization of Management Education, and authored the report's recommendations concerning what to teach about globalization, and how.

For more information, visit www.ghemawat.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Global strategy manual, October 1, 2007

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter (Hardcover)

Proponents and opponents of globalization have one thing in common: They believe globalization has arrived. The former cheer this change; the latter lament it. But both are wrong. Most business takes place within - not between - those anachronistic entities called "countries." If you assume "the world is flat," you'll founder. You will do far better, argues Pankaj Ghemawat, if you accept the reality of "semi-globalization" and navigate with the clever tools and in-depth case histories he provides. Ghemawat's noun-heavy prose suggests that he's been reading too many academic journals. Even so, we are well satisfied with this dense read, which provides far more nourishment than the insipid, fatty "globaloney" served by many business gurus. This book is a feast.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for those aspiring to understand global strategy, November 9, 2007

By 

Prof (Baruch College, City University New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter (Hardcover)

This book is a delight to all of us engaging with global strategy, as scholars, teachers and practitioners. Based on a thorough and deep analysis, Ghemawat provides a much-needed counter statement to the journalistic-style thinking that has threatened to dominate the common wisdom on globalization. He forcefully illustrates the inherent tension between the forces of globalization and localization, and the complex relationships between them. In doing that, he advocates a nuanced view of the impact of globalization on business, in which its diversity and plurality are explicitly recognized. A most important argument made by Ghemawat that should not be overlooked is that differences between countries are not only an obstacle to overcome, as commonly believed; In addition, they open up important opportunities, for the companies able to take advantage of them.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best book on Global Strategy So far!!!, November 11, 2007

By 

Professor "Kian" (Finland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter (Hardcover)

For those readers who are not familiar with Prof. Ghemawat works but are involved in business operation expansion via internationalization, ABSOLUTELY this is the right book for you. I go so far that recommend holding your choice of expansion until you and your management team finish reading this book.

The whole content of the book is so well bind together and is so coherent that you have to just follow the steps and make a map of your plan with recommended below tools:
1. AAA Triangle ( Adaptation, Aggregation, and Arbitrage ): These describe what right mode of your expansion is; depend on type of your business and nature of competitors and market conditions.
2. CAGE ( Culture, Administration or politics, Geography, Economics) tool to analyze either the nature of countries you would like to enter or nature of industries in the country that you would like to enter.
3. Finally make a map of your plan for decision making by ranking your choices through using "ADDING ( Add volume or growth, Decrease costs, Differentiation, improving industry attractiveness, Normalizing risk and Generate knowledge) value score. This tool will clarify for you and your organization: what is/are the drivers for your company to expand.

Having been involved in B2B international business over 17 years, I recommend to use first the "ADDING" tool and then move to "AAA triangle" and then analyze and priorities your choices through using "CAGE" tool.

So many thanks to Prof. Ghemawat who really described and explained the SEMIGLOBALISATION and then also explain how to thrive in this world by first describing the above tools and then explicitly showing the application of these tools in business such as car industry ( Toyota), Cement Industry ( Cemex), Retail industry ( WAl Mart), Health care ( P&G), IT industry (IBM), Software services ( Cognizant), Coca-cola and several others.