Whenever I meet top corporate strategists for the first time, Kenichi Ohmae's books always come up. Someone will ask, "Which one do you like best?" With The Next Global Stage, my answer has changed to this book. For those who want a more conceptual version of The World Is Flat that applies to future company and government decisions, The Next Global Stage is a good choice.
Mr. Ohmae makes several important arguments that will stimulate your mind for years to come.
1. Business decisions must be considered in terms of four dimensions in today's borderless world: communications, capital, corporations and consumers. This new perspective replaces his famous three c's in The Mind of the Strategist (competitors, the company and consumers).
2. The proper geographical entity to consider for decision making is a region rather than a nation state or a trading bloc. Such an entity will usually have at least 10 million people in it and will usually be part of a country.
3. Competitiveness is enhanced by expanding up and adding more common platforms (such as Windows, the Web, English, credit card systems, influential paradigms, and parallel educational backgrounds) whether as a company or as a geographical region.
4. Paradigms for making national political and economic policy are obsolete because they do not encompass solutions and money flows involving other countries. The new reality is here, but the paradigms to address the reality are not.
5. The borderless world has changed the tasks of political and business leaders in ways that most leaders are ignoring to their peril.
The book is enriched by a variety of perspectives involving geographic regions and countries that have prospered where success could not be assumed (such as companies in Sweden, Finland, Singapore, Dalian in China, the Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia, and Ireland) and which regions have the potential to become such prosperity centers in the future (especially in Asia and the Baltic). Mr. Ohmae is a strategist . . . and also an entrepreneur. His examples of own businesses enliven and illuminate his points in ways that considering Dell cannot do alone.
Regional politicians and CEOs will find that they can use this book to help decide which questions and issues they should be addressing. Although it's not clear what exactly has to be done, the result will be more agile responses in terms of amending business and political models to fit the shifting environments than would otherwise occur. As someone who advocates continuing business innovation in The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, I was pleased to see that Mr. Ohmae reaches the same conclusion in The Next Global Stage.
For those in Europe and the United States who are new to thinking about global competition and global supply chains, this book will be an essential primer to help acquire the insights needed to prosper over the next decade.
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