In our research, we looked at 12 pairs of successful and less successful multinational companies from a variety of industries and home markets over a 15-year time frame. Among the companies we studied were Nokia and Ericsson in the mobile phone industry, DaimlerChrysler and BMW in the automotive industry, IBM and HP in the computer industry, Lipton Foods and Twinings in the beverage industry and ABB and ALSTOM in the engineering industry. We compared the market capitalizations of the paired companies from the early 1990s to the end of 2004, noting the relative shifts in their growth rates. Compared with other measures such as revenue or profits, market capitalization has the advantage of immediately reflecting the market’s evaluation of strategic shifts. Using these timelines, we then looked for patterns in how the strategic shifts differed. We tested the patterns through surveys and in a series of discussions with... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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