We believe that value is created when the profits stay with the locals. So we try to work with enterprises which operate locally.
We also believe that an enterprise should aim to be competitive locally. The logic behind it is that so we support the companies which want to retain some value where they operate and care about the best practices. If your product is competitive locally you really care about the way you do business and your public image. They train local staff, care about the environment and safety around them and cannot exit quickly in case of an issue. This is why they succeed. It is not just a moral case but also a general strategy.
Since the late 1970s, governments on every continent have allowed the winds of global competition to blow through their economies. As policy makers have lowered tariff barriers and permitted foreign investments, multinational companies have rushed into those countries. U.S., European, and Japanese giants, it initially appeared, would quickly overrun local rivals and grab the market for almost every product or service. After all, they possessed state-of-the-art technologies and products, enormous financial resources, powerful brands, and the world’s best management talent and systems. Poor nations such as Brazil, China, India, and Mexico, often under pressure from developed countries, let in transnational companies, but they did so slowly, almost reluctantly. They were convinced that global Goliaths would wipe out local enterprises in one fell swoop.
That hasn’t happened. Over the past three years, we have been studying companies in 10 rapidly developing economies: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and Thailand. In those countries, smart domestic enterprises are more than holding their own in the face of foreign competition. They have staved off challenges from multinational corporations in their core businesses, have become market leaders or are catching up with them, and have often seized new opportunities before foreign players could. Many of them dominate the market today not because of protectionist economic policies, but because of their strategies and execution. The skeptics should have remembered that David slew Goliath—not the other way around.
We want to support this trend and allow healthy competition build each unique region to the standard we desire. This is why there is always a local partner to every our operation, there is a story behind our every product and a concept to everything we do.
