by Olga Annushkina

SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management

• Profilo
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• Altri Post (16)

In general, people do not trust foreigners.

How many times while embarking on a taxi journey in a foreign country you brace yourself for yet another delusion in the human kind. High probabilities are, you think, that your trip will be intentionally longer than it should have been, the driver won’t accept credit cards or will not have any change so that your tip will be approaching the value of your kids’ annual pocket money allowance or that you will have to pay for extra charges as highway tolls, festivities, luggage or weather. If you have time and a certain attitude, you may take precautions by asking a local acquaintance or a hotel concierge to arrange your trip, by checking Google maps for the directions or by consulting travellers websites for a “normal” city-airport taxi fare. Quite a bit of fuss for only one transaction, isn’t it?

On a much larger scale the deficit of cross-cultural trust is daily translated into the exponential insurgence of additional costs, unnecessary activities and simply personal worries in large multinational organizations.

by Olga Annushkina

SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management

• Profilo
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• Altri Post (16)

Moleskine notebooks, today famous all over the world, were born for the second time in Milan, Italy in 1997. In the first 9 months of 2015 Moleskine Srl revenues exceeded 86 mln Euro (annual revenues in 2014 were 98 mln Euro). With Mr.Arrigo Berni, CEO of the company, we discuss how Moleskine brand is dealing with opportunities and challenges of adaptation to local cultural settings around the globe.

by Olga Annushkina

SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management

• Profilo
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• Altri Post (16)

We are used to many contemporary breakthrough technology-based consumer products and services imported from the USA: Apple’s iconic smartphones and tablets, social networks, Amazon, wearable technologies, shared services. The USA corporations are launching these innovative products and services to target consumers in all important global markets, and Asia with its growing population, increasing urbanization levels and average incomes represents one of the key growth engines.

The increasingly interesting phenomena are products and services arriving from Asia that directly counterattack the US product launches in Asia and then on other competitive arenas. And Asian companies start succeeding where their European counterparts failed in 1990s and 2000s: in challenging the US-dominated global innovation.

by Olga Annushkina

SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management

• Profilo
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• Altri Post (16)

The need to rapidly grow on new markets is leading many firms to search for local partners and to form cross-border equity joint ventures. Among other entry modes to the foreign markets based on an equity investment, the joint ventures, at the first sight, possess many advantages: possibility to share risk and investment with the foreign partner, access to the local knowledge, distribution, partners and authorities via foreign partners' networks. In some countries forming a joint venture is requested by the local legislation and represents the only way for a company to enter the market. For example, 6,5 mln out of 22,2 millions of passenger cars sold in 2013 in China were produced by the international joint ventures formed before 2005 between Chinese automotive producers and main global brands.

The apparent ease of forming a joint ventures is leading many managers and entrepreneurs to undervalue the significance of the preparation phase to the joint venture formation. The sources of tensions and conflicts for the joint venture partners can be really many. In fact, the joint ventures are considered to be one of the most unstable entry modes to the foreign markets, and the uncertainty about the joint venture’s competitive performance seems to be just one of the many factors potentially hindering its success.

by Olga Annushkina

SDA Professor of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management

• Profilo
|
• Altri Post (16)

In 2015 the emerging markets (neither “BRIC”s nor “MINT”s) are still not back to the double digit growth due to the sluggish global economic context, low oil prices negatively affecting oil exporters, Ebola epidemic and political instability.

The double digit growth is nevertheless there, in the statistics on the accumulated stock of outward foreign direct investments by the key emerging economies (acquisitions of lasting management interest of minimum of 10% of voting stock in markets other than that of an investor).

In 2013 the stock of Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) became the largest among the emerging economies surpassing Russian OFDIs. In fact, Chinese OFDIs had been recently attracting more and more attention in the mature economies as some of the “iconic” brands and companies are changing the hands. The objectives of Chinese cross-border M&As and greenfield investments vary by industry and by country, but most of them seem to share the common pattern: mid-term and long-term orientation.