Many companies today are truly global in reach. Shell Oil has operations in more than 140 countries, Coca-Cola sells its products in more than 200 countries, and Nestlé boasts that it has factories or operations in almost every country in the world. For the executives running these companies, the challenge of keeping abreast of events in markets around the world is mind boggling. Interestingly, the biggest problem is not a lack of information: Executives are deluged with monthly reports and market analyses for every country in which they operate. The problem is having the time and energy to process the information. Indeed, executive attention is a scarce resource, one that needs to be carefully managed.1

How should executives prioritize their time to ensure that it is focused on the countries and subsidiaries that need their attention? Which markets should they emphasize, and which can they allow to fall off their radar screen? We have researched executive attention in global companies for the past five years, interviewing 50 executives at 30 corporations. (See “About the Research,” p. 40.) Despite the best of intentions and irrespective of the exhortation that companies should “think global, act local,” the evidence shows clearly that corporate executives end up prioritizing a handful of markets at the expense of the others. One reason for selective attention is ethnocentric thinking — the tendency to assume that the home market is most important. Of course, no executive would state this directly, but the evidence of a home-country bias is widespread and undisputed.2

Another factor is the so-called “herd mentality,” which causes companies to focus on markets that competitors have identified. It is human nature to go “where the action is,” and as a result some countries (most recently, China and India) attract a disproportionate amount of executive attention.

Both of these approaches are entirely defensible: They help channel resources to the most important areas of activity, and they seem relatively safe. But they can also be very wrong. Because executive attention is so limited, focusing on the home market or on a hot market will always come at the expense of other opportunities. The resulting mismatch between what’s possible and what’s needed can be quite damaging: Too much attention can disempower or suffocate subsidiary managers. As one executive noted, managers can become so preoccupied with representing their operations to executives that they don’t have enough time to