Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World (1990)
Japanese expert in globalization and strategy (pictured right).
See also...
Kenichi Ohmae in the Management
Gurus section.
Book summary
What is the borderless world?
Customers’ tastes and preferences are becoming truly international, creating a “borderless world”, in
which:
- resources (particularly knowledge) flow freely between different countries.
People become global citizens, buying global products from customer driven global corporations.
What is the Inter-linked Economy?
Trade makes us all interdependent in the “Inter-linked Economy”, making every country’s economy dependent on
global prosperity.
What makes a
global corporation successful?
The global corporation must:
- remove the “headquarters mentality” (power and information must be spread throughout the
organization).
- be sensitive to customer requirements in key markets (managers must view all customers as “equidistant”
from head office and so giving them all equal consideration).
- consider strategic alliances with other companies.
- encourage innovation in all the corporation’s activities, so providing new ways of delivering customer
value (“do more better”, says Ohmae).
- have a global strategy – see below.
What is the ideal global strategy?
What the ex-Sony boss, Akio Morita, has
called “global localization”.
This is a global strategy that is sensitive to local customer needs (think globally, act
locally).
The global corporation and its international
subsidiaries...
They must be unified by:
- a global strategy, setting broad objectives (within which the corporation’s subsidiaries
are free to manage themselves and treated as equal partners).
Key quotes on globalization
Knowledge is the secret of success in the borderless world.
Global players... must be directly familiar with the key markets.
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