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Title: Global Strategies: Insights from the World's Leading Thinkers (The Harvard Business Review Book Series) by Percy Barnevik, Rosabeth Moss Kanter ISBN: 0-87584-561-4 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00

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Summary: For those who want to be a world player in 15 years time
Comment: Globalization is forcing companies to rethink strategies, redesign organizations, seek new partnerships and open both minds and boundaries. Managers try to match competitive advantages of their global rivals by changes such as moving manufacturing offshore but few go beyond mere imitation and are trapped in an endless game of catch up. Regaining competitiveness may require rethinking competitor analysis through strategic intent. In 1970 Komatsu, Honda and Canon were small compared to their US rivals Caterpillar, American Motors and Xerox but by beginning with ambitions out of all proportion to their resources and capabilities sustained over a 10 to 20 year quest for global leadership, these Japanese firms became world players. The American firms had misinterpreted the strategic intent of the Japanese. Not possessing long-term, competitor-focused goals themselves, Western companies did not ascribe such intentions to their rivals. They calculated the threat posed by potential competitors in terms of their existing resources rather than their resourcefulness. As they were oblivious to the strategic intent and intangible advantages of their rivals, American and European businesses were caught off guard.

Strategic intent is more than ambition; it includes focusing on winning, motivating staff, encouraging individual and team contribution, sustaining enthusiasm and using intent to guide resource allocation. Strategic intent implies a sizable stretch for an organization. Current capabilities and resources will not suffice. This forces the organization to be more inventive and make the most of limited resources. Whereas the traditional view of strategy focuses on the degree of fit between existing resources and current opportunities, strategic intent creates an extreme misfit between resources and ambitions. Top management is specific about the end but is less prescriptive about the means and challenges the organization to close the gap by systematically building new advantages. Successful companies have four things in common: vision, leadership, communication, and execution. Four approaches to competitive advantage are evident in the global expansion of Japanese companies: building layers of advantage such as starting with black and white TV sets and then moving to color; searching for loose bricks by building a base of attack just outside the market territory that industry leaders currently occupy; changing the terms of engagement under the premise that a successful competitor is wedded to a recipe for success; and competing through collaboration under the maxim "my enemy's enemy is my friend"

The chapter on how global companies win out points out that competing globally sometimes demands unconventional approaches such as investment in projects with zero or even negative ROI and careful attention to searching questions such as 'What kind of resources - over a long period - will be required to establish the leading position?' There are case studies including Unilever, L.M.Ericsson (developing and exploiting a technological niche) and the three crucial steps that were decisive in Honda's achievement, while pointing out that successful approaches will probably not work forever because competitors will try to push industrial trends away from the strengths of industry leaders.

Chapters include interviews with Wisse Dekker of Philips, Whirlpool CEO David Whitman, Vitro's Ernesto Martens, reflections by Gurcharan Das, and a section on developing a global strategy. Success in today's international climate - a far cry from only a decade ago - demands highly specialized yet closely linked groups of global business managers, country or regional managers, and worldwide functional managers. Companies are just beginning to learn what nations have always known: in a complex, uncertain world filled with dangerous opponents, it is best not to go it alone. Great powers operating across broad theaters of engagement have traditionally made common cause with others whose interests ran parallel with their own.

Global competition rules of the game are changing constantly and a company has to accept an endless game of catch-up or adopt strategic intent. This book is invaluable for those who want to be a world player in 15 years time.