Emerging markets such as the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—entice and intimidate. When managers are asked what is special about emerging markets, they typically point to rapid economic growth, potential competitors, and vexing problems including but not limited to corruption, financial crises, and weak intellectual property rights.
Book excerpt from Winning in Emerging Markets: A Road Map for Strategy and Execution
By Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu
Emerging market -based companies also need to weigh their ambitions with their capabilities, particularly as they consider approaches to globalization. Teva Pharmaceutical's "billion-dollar theory" exemplifies emerging giant audacity. As one company executive explained, "Many companies pass the same way in Israel. The difference is really not personal. The difference is in the recognition that going the path that history wrote for us, we will remain a small Israeli company that will not have any influence on anything. If you want to do something, try to do something very different. What we did was something that, at that time, was very different." 2
[This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.]