The New Multinationals

A new breed of multinational companies is reshaping competition in global industries. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries multinational firms came from the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Over the last two decades however new multinational firms from upper-middle-income economies (e.g. Spain Ireland Portugal South Korea and Taiwan) developing countries (e.g. Egypt Indonesia and Thailand) and oil-rich countries (e.g. United Arab Emirates Nigeria Russia and Venezuela) have become formidable global competitors. These firms do not necessarily possess technological or marketing skills. In contrast to the classic multinationals they found strength in their ability to organize manage execute and network. They pursued a variety of strategies including vertical integration product diversification learning by doing exploration of new capabilities and collaboration with other firms. This book documents this phenomenon identifies key capabilities of the new multinationals and provides a new conceptual framework to understand its causes and implications.