This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Most multinationals see globalization as a matter of replication--spreading a single business model as widely as possible to maximize economies of scale. From this perspective, the key strategic challenge is choosing how much of the model to keep standard and how much to grudgingly adapt to local tastes. But focusing exclusively on that choice is a mistake, for it blinds companies to the very real opportunities they can still gain from arbitrage--from exploiting differences as opposed to similarities. Indeed, the scope for arbitrage is as wide as the differences that remain among countries, and those differences continue to be broad and deep. They can, in fact, be divided into four main categories: cultural, administrative, economic, and geographic. In each category, old opportunities persist and new ones are arising. Consider the continued cachet of French culture in its wines and haute couture or how swiftly the Finns have become known for their expertise in wireless communications. Clearly, legal and other administrative differences, particularly in tax laws and the cost of capital, remain large. So do purely economic wage differentials. Both the differences that make arbitrage valuable and the similarities that make replication important will remain with us for the foreseeable future, and combining the two, while necessary, is tricky.

【書誌情報】

ページ数：16ページ

サイズ：A4

商品番号：HBSP-R0311E

発行日：2003/11/1

登録日：2012/3/28