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This research study compares the financial success of emerging market companies that have globalized with similar sized EMNC companies that have stayed home.

One target cohort for this study was the short list of emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) that the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published yearly from 2006 to 2016. 212 EMNCs were divided into three types: 10;1. Global Leaders – 19 from this list 10;2. Persistent Challengers – 78 companies on the BCG list. 10;3. Challengers – 115 companies were on BCG’s lists in various years. 10; Their financial results were compared with a group of 26 “Local Leaders,” emerging market companies that had revenues of over $10 billion but had not appeared even once on BCG’s list of global challengers. 10;

Local Leaders show superior financial performance when compared to Global Leaders.

Opportunistic moves to globalize without a sound underlying strategy have backfired on many emerging market companies, resulting in lagging financial performance and sometimes huge write-downs.

A carefully done study that indicates that globalization is not the magic bullet that improves the financial performance of an emerging market company.

In order to be a true global leader, Chinese firms must be able to be trailblazers in both emerging and advanced markets.

Five major Chinese companies are studied: Each of the five leaders has shown interest in building an organization that can nurture innovation that is more than incremental.

Each of the five companies needs a clear long-term vision that will guide innovation and point to where these companies should place their slow-to-pay-off R&D bets.

The agility to take advantage quickly as opportunities emerge–by practicing frequent experimentation, promptly divesting failed projects and rapidly scaling up investments in successful ones–has been an important ability that has contributed to the success of the five companies.

Breakthrough product innovation will be an important competence for the future success of these five Chinese companies. Some of the five companies have developed a growing appetite for external collaboration to drive innovation.

As an alternative to the two extremes of protecting and extending the core business versus transforming it, the article aims to propose two other renewal strategies, “leverage” and “build,” that together provide a pathway for continuous renewal.

This article looks at the case of Best Buy, which has progressively used “leverage” and “build” strategies to modify its competence platform from an early emphasis on operational excellence to complement it with modularity, flexibility and customer centricity. Correspondingly, its market reach has grown from Minnesota to all of North America with recent forays into China.

When the firm's performance did not meet expectations, top management did not focus merely on better execution; rather it questioned if the firm's vision needed to be revised. Best Buy's renewal journey is guided by a continuous re‐visioning of the company, or in Best Buy's jargon continuous re‐“Concept”ualization of the company. Best Buy has transformed itself via six concepts, Concepts I‐VII, with the change from one to the next accelerating over the years.

The article explains how a firm can use these two renewal strategies to perform a dramatic transformation, but through an evolutionary process not a revolutionary one.

The case illustrates the implementation of “leverage” and “build” strategies that together provide a pathway for continuous renewal.

The purpose of this paper is to question the continued usefulness of the hierarchy of strategies framework and to propose a new approach.

The study reviews extant literature and theorizes a new approach.

The paper finds that the hierarchy of strategies was a useful framework when it was first proposed, but since then a changed business context has made this framework obsolete. What is needed instead is a framework around a heterarchy of strategies. The locus of decision making is no longer hierarchical and corporate, business and functional strategies are far more interdependent and interlinked than they have been in the past.

Research on a hierarchy of strategies has run its course. Future empirical and theoretical work should focus on a heterarchy of strategies.

The paper provides a framework for managers whether from corporate, business divisions or functions to help with the continuous renewal of their firm.

Prior empirical and theoretical strategy research has taken the hierarchy of strategy framework for granted. The original contribution of this paper is to propose an alternative framework around a heterarchy of strategies.

Strategic renewal requires both a top‐down and bottom‐up effort. Top management sets the broad vision for the firm and specifies the scope and pace of renewal. However, it is the firm's entrepreneur‐managers who shape its renewal strategies and take responsibility for their implementation. This paper aims to profile the skills, personal traits and experiences of successful entrepreneur‐managers.

The paper uses field research.

The paper finds that entrepreneur‐managers are in part corporate entrepreneurs. They are outward‐focused, cognizant of changes in their business environment and the new opportunities that these may bring. They are willing to experiment with new business models and to explore new capabilities. But they are also operating managers interested in scaling up an entrepreneurial idea and in delivering results. They have a few special personality traits. They are not risk averse and are action oriented. They are also supremely self‐confident. These traits allow entrepreneur‐managers to take risks, persist despite failures and learn from their mistakes. However, more than special traits, it is experience that grooms entrepreneur‐managers in a firm. Entrepreneur‐managers are typically not new comers to the organization. Their long tenure helps with networking inside the firm. They also have an established track record of performing well. That buys them the freedom to operate outside the usual confines of the organization and enjoy the trust that is needed to take risks on behalf of the firm.

Like in any field‐based study, the sample size is a limitation. However, for the modest goal that this paper has set for itself, i.e. profiling the entrepreneur‐manager, this is not a severe limitation.

The paper provides a profile for identifying and nurturing entrepreneur‐managers. As it argues, they are the drivers of strategic renewal within the firm.

Prior empirical and theoretical research on intrapreneurship has focused more on creating distinct new corporate ventures. This article suggests that the real power of intrapreneurship is to help connect the future of the firm with its current core businesses. Intrapreneurship is about leverage and build, more so than transform, to use the three types of renewal strategies that are offered in this article.

This paper aims to explain how undue emphasis on unit accountability can foster parochial behaviors and silo thinking that drive out inter‐unit cooperation. It also aims to warn that growth strategies depend on cross business sharing.

The author, Royal Dutch Shell Chair Professor of Sustainable Business Growth at IMD, details four steps senior executives can take to fight the growing insularity among a firm's businesses and promote better sharing among them.

The four steps are: reinforce the company's shared purpose and values; nurture boundary spanners; provide score cards that are balanced between horizontal contributions and vertical contributions; and support the informal organization by encouraging interactions, such as social events.

By nurturing the informal organization, managers encourage a culture of sharing. Sharing between two business units is helped if at least one of them has a boundary spanner who can act as the bridge.

Paradoxically, the very features of a competence that make it distinctive and hard for competitors to procure or copy are also the ones that are more tacit and difficult to share internally as well.

Low customer purchasing power and lack of adequate infrastructure are two difficulties that restrict opportunities in any emerging market. This paper seeks to describe how to overcome these hurdles.

The paper blends two different perspectives on emerging markets: unearthing opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid, and coping with institutional voids, to offer a unified framework and illustrate it with examples.

In order to fully leverage the opportunities afforded by emerging markets, companies need both product and business‐system innovations. The former is needed to serve customers at price points that they can afford and the latter to reach them in the market and to offer them additional services that have the potential to justify a price premium or at the very least will build brand loyalty.

The proposed strategy has its own risks. But there are potential payoffs as well. Further research is needed to assess these tradeoffs.

The article explains how companies that learn to offer combinations of product and business‐system innovations can dominate the emerging markets they enter.

The article provides a model showing how companies can fully leverage the opportunities afforded by emerging markets,

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

When Tata Motors heralded its ultra‐low‐priced Nano car as a “safe, affordable, all‐weather form of transport for families,” not only was the mobility of India's middle classes to be revolutionized, the world's businesses were being given an enviable example of product innovation. Unfortunately, the car has not sold as well as expected and some experts blame this on the company's failure to be equally innovative with its business system.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

In the few decades since corporate strategy really took off a serious academic discipline, several luminaries such as Michael Porter have made their mark be developing a theory, refining it and testing it, and in turn having a huge impact on how the subject is studied by business students and practitioners alike. Other academics have tried to challenge the theories, pick arguments or just plain put down these seminal theorists. Others tinker with the formulae to try and make their own impact. However some try to genuinely expand on the original and attempt to take it into new directions and dimensions that, crucially, take account of the rapid changes in business practices.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

What would you do if the business function that you were heading up was heading into serious decline? This was the situation that senior managers in the yogurt division at food giant Nestlé found themselves in the 1990s. But rather than hope to ride the market out, they decided to introduce probiotic properties into their products and therefore turn yogurt into a functional food. The fortunes of the business were transformed and Nestlé has since used functional foods as an important platform for growth.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.