New Era of 'Globality' Forces Established Companies to Compete with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything, according to The Boston Consulting Group

Business Wire,  June 11, 2008  

Tags: Boston Consulting Group Inc.

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Tidal Wave of Little-Known but Powerful Challengers from Emerging Markets Is Rising Up; Industry Leaders Need to Learn Their Secrets or Lose Influence, Edge

New Book Provides Wake-Up Call and Prescriptions for Making Sense of the New Competitive Free-for-All

NEW YORK -- The world of business has entered a revolutionary new phase of global competition--one that is fast replacing the old model of "globalization," according to experts at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

BCG calls this new era--and competitive reality--"globality." It's the subject of a new book, GLOBALITY: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything (Business Plus, June 2008), by three BCG partners: Harold L. Sirkin, James W. Hemerling, and Arindam K. Bhattacharya.

The book describes how the established business model--centralized, top-down, process-driven and with influence running from West to East--is receding, perhaps vanishing.

"Globality is what comes next: a totally different kind of environment in which business flows in every direction, companies have no centers, and even the idea of foreignness is foreign," said Sirkin, a senior partner and global leader of BCG's Operations practice.

"The era of globality holds a number of surprises, especially for those who aren't paying close attention to rapidly developing economies," explained coauthor Hemerling, a senior partner and coleader of BCG's Global Advantage initiative. "An Indian company virtually owns the small-motorbike market in a number of high-growth markets like Mexico, Colombia, Egypt, and Bangladesh. A Brazilian metals company now controls the biggest nickel miner in Canada. A Chinese maker of baby strollers has 80 percent of the Chinese market and 28 percent of the U.S. market and develops new products at an astonishing rate. These new global challengers are changing the game in every industry."

An Unprecedented Wave of New Competition from Developing Markets

The book uses dozens of examples to bring to life the tidal wave of challenger companies from developing nations that are remaking global competition, on the scale of the United States's first challenging Europe and Japan's first challenging the United States. "This wave is more like a tsunami and will make earlier waves look like a ripple," said Hemerling.

The New Imperative: Learn from the Developing-Market Challengers

The new challengers aren't simply serving and supplying incumbent leaders and dominating home markets; many are grabbing worldwide leadership positions. Accordingly, it's now just as important for established players in developed markets to look to the challengers for lessons as it is to look at traditional competitors.

Said coauthor Bhattacharya, a partner and coleader of the firm's Global Advantage initiative, "We're all realizing that the United States and other established markets aren't going to be the center of the world for much longer. But when it comes to business, the story is more complicated. If current industry leaders internalize what's happening in rapidly developing markets, study what challenger companies are doing there, and make a serious commitment to transforming their businesses, they will stand a good chance of continuing to compete successfully."

Lessons from the Challengers: Cost Control, Local Customization, a Borderless Executive Suite, Impressive Global Growth

GLOBALITY describes how:

* Brazilian jet maker Embraer rose to be number one in small jets (those with fewer than 120 seats) and turned convention upside down--literally: The top of its newest jet is wider than the bottom. It provides more room without sacrificing fuel efficiency. The plane is so popular that orders are backlogged.

* Indian company Aravind Eye Care reengineered cataract surgery and now performs 250,000 surgeries annually; 60 percent of them are done for free, and the company still makes a profit.

* A repairman for appliance maker Haier kept having to unclog the drainpipes of customers' clothes washers in rural China; they were using the machines to wash sweet potatoes. Now the machines come with a "vegetable wash" cycle.

* Chinese battery maker BYD uses assembly lines of hundreds of people each not only to reduce cost but also to increase efficiency; they can do shorter production runs, offer a wider range of products, and rapidly roll out new products while competitors are stuck retooling and reprogramming the robotics on automated assembly lines.

* In just five years, India-based Bharat Forge grew from a small local firm into the world's second-largest automotive forgings company. The company believes in acquisition but not integration; acquired units are highly autonomous. Like many challengers, the company sees itself as "polycentric."

"No market is too small or remote to offer some kind of valuable resource, cost advantage, or market opportunity. This rapid expansion of commerce--in all directions at once--threatens to swamp established leaders that fail to understand and respond to it," said Sirkin. "However, being open to rapidly developing markets and learning from their best companies can open many doors to opportunities."