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April 1994 Issue

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Page 1: The Asian Manager, April 1994 Issue
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C O V E R STORY

Global

Asia is where thefuture is at,

saystheauthor of Winning

Worldwide.. . BY DOUQUS UMONT

SENIOR LECTURER, KELl.OQQ GRADUATE SCHOOL

OF MANAQEMENT NORTHWESTERN UNlVERSlTY

m Asia

irsuesthatIwouIdliketoputbeforeyou. meseare: What is @obal envy? How can vou reinvent vow firms; How can iou gain mok market share;

Howcanyouinaeasepdits;and6naUy,

-1 What is the future of global business? J

llw first irst '"What is global envy?" is to me, about suaes stories. For the second concan. Iwill discuss how toeinvent firmsin light of &tingcommonmarketfreehade m a r t s ; ie.. the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the ASEAN Ffee

Trade Area (AFTA) and the &Pacific Eanomic Cooperation (APEC) fonun. Third, we wiUlookintowaysmwhi&mmp&may gainalargermarketshare.Anotherquestion Ihopetoanswerishowcompanies~an&tainmorepmfitsttuoughshategicallianas,~t venhves, p-ps; and through what wemight call, relationshipmarkehg. Finally, Ihopetobn&yad~the~tion:'~tisthefu~Lorglobal~iness?"andprovi& youwithsomefneca~6andpredictionsthatmightassistb~pactitione~)inmaldng choiczsinthefuture.

- wasunhappy withitseconod;iclotmmparedtothe~nitedstatedandhersfefoundtheneeh to pin NAFTA. Global envy is also why Poland, theCzech Republic and Hungary want to pin the European Union Envy iswhy the Philippines, Indonesia and o h m i n theASEAN w o n want to form a gmuping that will resemble North America's fm badeagreement

Envyalsomeansthedesiretopossess~adv~.LaokatthereasonswhyCanada joined the United States in the initial free bade arrangement Canada wanted to get away irom an ~merican law called "dumpmg" -which ki indusby park~e, is also h w n & "iniw~"301"or"su~er301."Canadaioined theUnitedStates becauseCanada wantedto po&&an equal advantage in the US 'market ' firmswantdtobe treated as equals emf American firms in the US =vwelv, Amencan firmswantehtobe~tedasequalsofCanadianfinnsintheCanahmarket Mexico, quite naturally, did not want to be left out and Ms;ican firms d-dedthatthevbetreatedaseaualsdAmericanandCanadianfirmsin the larger ~ o r t h k c a n market. '

Enw, therefne. isa desire to wsseaseaual advantam. Chile wants to bin N A ~ : while C h is in ~outh'~maica;this onmhyYdesperately wank to pin NAFTA to gain equal acress to the American market for its primary

resovcesadthe

systems, 'tunrrels, radrcahs and highways. ~n other words, global envy also meamtometalltheinfrastrucim?that manersandamliestodevelwmmt . . and industdalization

Enw also ltleans to acouiexe to the market economv. And what better I have.

and intperation within the b' lha i l and . Indc-China,ASEAN Asia-Pacific I - m a r k e t ~ m y

In a nuldwll. this all constitutes elobal mw. Disrontent trnned into sales, I pmfrtrandburdnessoppahlnities,~~&eadvantageandw~~ - able dewbmumt It is a desire toDartifioate a u d v in the maim markelsof the world. 'Global envy is to Get t& i n f r a k & d r e s o k and the managerial capability that other nations have. It also meampining the struggle to create a worldwide global market economy.

- - -. . . . . . . - Recently a report from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington listed 11 socalled

"success stork" llw list induded Mexico, Poland, POILU@, Turkey, Aushalia, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, New Zealand, South Korea and Spain I could add to this list a few o k of my own candidates, most nolably Thailand a d Malaysia. nase on this list are countries that have "seen the future." They have, in the wads of World Bank officiak, govanedthemarketwell by udngtotheirktadvantagetheresourceavailabletothw. T h e nations' techmaats and economists have cwted ma- poIkie8 that result in low inflation Thqr have invested heavily in education and &. 'Ihqr have a m n u a g e d , ~ ~ a n d r e w a z . d e d i n v e s t m e n 6 - ~ d o t h c a n d ~ - i n

a n d ~ ~ . . A n d t h e v h a v e m u e h t t o m n a l i z e ~ manufaaunne

sha~inthegiobal-~ca~o'm~mind,these~the~~rules~the&aea~ low inflatioc invest heavilv in infrastructue. educaiion and lmhhz and. find wavs to

.r - down-plane &~~.umptim'This is the new @&I d t y .

IlwelwkfuramomentatEast Asia,andasktheaue3iion."WhatroledcxstheUnited !?dates have to I would say that the united stab is a large and iqxutant player in

m L 1 9 9 4 * T H E W MANAGER 15

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C O V E R S T O R Y

the global economy and remains the mainenghe of the global economy.

yy'hat is the role of laoan? The recessionand the problems we currentlv see in theJapanese economy are merely transitory Ja-pan is a strong competitor, and like the UnitedStaies rcmains a strong engine of the globaleconomy.

What is the role of NAFIA? NAFIA is avery important building-block in the globalrnarket economy. l€t me just give you oneexample. NAFIlls accession claus€ is open toany country in the world that agrees in prin-ciple to free trade. It is not simplv for thecountries of North America. NAFIA is opento any country in the world that agr€es to fr€etrade. Itis oDen to the courtries ofAsia and thePacific and to the European countries as well.Those nations who wish to join NAFlAmustagree to fiee trade - no tariffs, no non-tariffbarriers, nor onerous restrictions. By agreeingto these stipulations, nations gah access to thewhole US market, Canada and other coun-tries that have chosen to participate in theagreement. NAFIA is important to Asia'sfuture and is oDen to all thos€ who wish toseek membership.

We have then the tieers of the 198Os: South\orc4, rarwdr, rrong Kong ano >mgaPore.We have the new tigers of the 190s: Thailand,Malaysia and southem and coastal China.And we have the emerging tiger cubs for thisdecade and the next : Indonesia and the Phil-ippines and perhapt India.

And then perhaps, in the 21st centuy wewill have Vieham and the Russian Far Eastjoining in this great experiment of change. ThePhilippines will be poised for take-off, readyto join Indonesia and ready to participate inthis great growth opporhurity that we cw-rently see in the Pacific.

Heie is my abbreviated economic forecast.See if you agree with me.

. South Korea ioins the Gn)up of Sevenand competes against Japan ior marketsnare;o Mexico and Korea join the OECD. Malaysia, Thailand and coastal andsouthem China become imDortant inter-nal domestic markets for the sale of prod-ucts made elsewhere in the resion andelsewhere h the world.What arc the hottest ercwth markets?

Again Korea - and this is greater Korea -Korea plus China's Zhandong province, plusthe Russian Far East. That region is going toboom. Greater China - not just Guanzhaoand Hong Kong and South China - butShanehai and other industrial zones are alsogoing to take-off. We are toin8 to see lots ofnew Japarese investment and lots of newSingaporean inveshnent in that area.

And then there in all those Chinese com-panies from Beijing trading on tie st(rck ex-change. We call them the red-chip companies;Chinese.owned companies from the Chinese

'16

mainland that are tradingon the stock exchange. Who

-

would have thought of thisiust a couple of years ago?Then there is also lndo-China, Vieham and Thai-larld. Other growth areasinclude Singapore, JohoreBahru and Batam, the is-lands off hdonesia. Theseareas are the hottest growthmarke ts in the wor ldeconomy today.

But remember, if wename areas outside Asia, wewould have to includeNorthem Mexico as a hotgrowth market. [n theUnited States today, the full-t ime attention of manyCEOs is how to find ways toinvest money in NorthemMexico; and how to tieNorthem Mexico, CentralMexico to the greater NorthAmerican economy. Capital is mobile, socapi-tal goes where tiere is opportunity and Asiatoday competes aEainst Northem Meico aswell as the other hot resions of East Asia.

So what is global envy? It is a farsightedforecast of where you can put your money,where you can invest, where you can incr€asemarket share, where you can get mor€ profitald where you can be more successful.

Reinventirg FimsMy second question, is how to reinvent

firms? How to rcinvent firms in terms of freetrade? In terms of NAFIA? ln terms of APEC?In terms of the Euopean Union and in termsof all tJre agreements that are circulating andenjoying the attention of govemments today?

We a t the Kellogg School look a t decisionstaken by executives in marketing and ourprescription is to say that you must tailor yourdecisions, tailor yourproducts and tailor yourservices to fit the various local culture rnwhose markets you compete. Although thereai€ thos€ who will tell you that itis a borderlessworld and that vou can s€ll the same Droductany place - any where, any time - we at theKellogg School don't believe that. We believein tailorcd-marketing - marketing productsspecifically for the local, regional and nationaleconomies of the world.

Before there was free trade between the USand Canada, a companv called Molson Beerdecided to expand outside Canada and ex-port its products to the United Stabes. To do so,ihe company advertis€d heavily in the UnitedStates using imates that rcinforced pre-con-ceived images of Canada. Their advertisingfeatured the Royal Canadian Mounted Policeand they did very well, eventuallygoingon tobecome the number two seller of beer in theUnited States.

NAFTAb ar€ry lmportntthdrdi1€:tlck in thegfobdmafiet economy.

What happened af-ter that was what hap-pens to any leadingproduct - anotherproduct came alongand knocked Molsondown a notch. Mexico'sCorona beer began sell-ing its beer by sayingd1at it was not a goodthhg to be reminded ofsnow and slush anddisagreeable weather.h other wordg their ad-vertising was direcdyt a r g e t e d a g a i n s tMolson. Corona adsasked consume$ tothink of the beaches inAcapulco and Mexico- evoking all the sunand firn. The messagewas "Drink Coronabeer " After this mediaons laught , Mo lson

slipped to the mrmber three position andCorona took its place as the beer of choice. Mypoint is: these companies' advertising cam-paigns were tailored to the American market.Molson chose to caDitalize on tlrc machismoand good-guy attributes ass{xiated with theMounties and Corona cho6e to capitalize onthe sun and fesrfl atmosohere of Mexico.

When lapanese firmsiome into the UnitedStates, they invariably pick a brand nameAmericans or English-speakhg consunerscan pronounce. For instance, Sony picked abrandname for its portable cassette recordersand transistor radios that is English:Walkman. This name was picked specificallyby Sony so Americans would use it and couldpronounce the na-rne of their prcduct

For the Korean comparfes, it's sli8htlydifferent. Samsung, Daewoo, and Kia havefirst looked to the various cultural rninoritiesin the United Siates - to the Korean Ameri-cans, the Asian Americans - to gain accept-ance of their product. These companies beganby selling to these minorities and expandinginto a wider community in the United States;finally captudng a sizable market sharc.

There are manv examples of successfiAsian firms. I will give youlust a few. There isin Japan a group which is responsible forputting together an East Asia Purchasing net-work which includes firms in Hong Kong,firmsin Thailand, firmsin Malaysia and firmsin Singapore who buy and source prcducts inthe United States and bring these to depart-ment stores in East Asia for distribution. Thisis all they do. This East Asia purchasing net-work does onJy one thing and does it well -sourcing products.

Of the Korean firrns, Hyundai and Lottehave given up product diversification and arefocusing on their core business. Asoneoftheir

APBIL 1994. THE ASIAN MANAGER

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PEOPLE oo/,e?/ti,/e

efforts to market the Pruton. I kouble adjusting and econcil-ing his higNy-specialized,computer literate self tomarketing expert that he istouted tobe. "lt's not difficult"he says, "when you enjoy whatyou're doing."

had geat confidence in thepruCuct then. I still do. oI ynow I'm actually in a positioninfluence the productb develop-ment."

Datuk Mohamed NadzmiMohamsd Salleh

rotons's - I)eruhasaanOtomobil NasionalBerhad - new marrbehind the wheel

is Dattrl< Mohamed NadzmiMohamed Salleh, the formerexecutive dirertor of EdaranOtomobil Nasional Bhd (EON).

tt was at EON that Nadzmifirst grabbed the attention ofProton's b<lard of directors.Underhis leadership, EON, thesole national distributor of theProton Saga's distributol madeProton a runaway best-seller

Nadzmi rcmembers theuphill battle to promote Proton."144:ren we first started out, wemet stlont consumer resist-ance, but now we've manag€dto win wide acceptance for ourproduct. ln fact, the ProtonSaga has won numerousawards in motor shows and isnow exported to the UnitedKinSdom and other countriesin Asia and Europe, proving itsvalue in the fughly competitiveintemational car industry."

The decision to move fromEON to Proton was "the

toughest decision in my careet"says Nadzmi, who neverthelessaccepted the challenge becausehe wanted to gain a firmergrounding in the automotiveindustry and because the newjob provided some sort ofcontinuity to his previous iob.

Says Nadzmi, "l'm benefit-ing hom the fruits of my earlier

ohn Gage is the directorof Science at SunMicrosystems ComputerCorporation (SMCC).

Also known as Sur, SMCC is aworld leader in client-servercomputing solutions that featurenetworked work-stations ands€rvers that store, process anddistribute information. AmongSun's longest-serving employlees, John joined the companyshortly after its establishhdt in1982 and is instrumental toSun's emerging fame in theglobal computer industry.

John Gage

At present, he is responsiblefor linking Sun to the world'sscientific and technical commu,nities. John translates Sun'stechnical knowledge intofunctional systems that even thelayman can unde$tand. SaysJohn,

"One thing I like about myiob is that it can be divided intotwo parts. The first involvesbeing in the research lab, talkingto people who are totallyfocused on computer's andcomputer systems and thesecond, involves marketing andtalking to the end users of thesesystems, which demands anentirely different mindset." Johndoesn'tappear to have any

Gelli was chairman of the VysyaBanl Ltd.- currently lndiats

'

leading private bank. Gellilooks back to his long careerwith Vysya have yet been themost rewarding and futfilling ofmy professional life." Duringhis tjerm as chairman, Vysyarose to the top of India'scompetitive private bankingindustry and Gelli recelvednumerous awards, includingthe coveted Padma Shri awa-rd,one of his country's mostpreshgious awards made todeserving civiliars.

Apart from his beingchairman of Global Trust Banl,Gelli is on the board of variouslndian management associa-tions. oire of which is the AIIIndia Management Ass<riation,a key organization in propagat-rng management education inIndia.

Celli vows to bring the sameenthusiasm and dedication thathelped him make Vysyamrmber one to his new job atClobal Trust Bark. Indeed,India's members of Lndia'sbanking ald busine.;s circlet arewaiting for a repeat perform-ance. Will his new banl becomeVysa's main competitor? Watchthis space.

amesh Gelli is theIndia's Global TiustBank's new chairman.Prior to his appointment,

recent visitor to Manilawas Dr Douglas PLamont a managementexpert on intemational

Dr. Dougas tamont

Graduate School of Manage-ment at Northwestem Univer-sity, Dr. lamont was a principalspeaker at the Asian Institute ofManagement's 1994 intema-honal maiagement conf erenceheld on global competitivenq;sand sustainable development.

Thouth most of his havelsoutside the United Statesregularly brrrg him to Europeand South America, Dr. Lamontconfesses to an "affinity forAsia." A former army captairLLamont saw duty during theMetnam War. His experienceduiing that protracted conJlicthas not soured his feelings forVietnam or its neighbors. Everyso often, Kellogg sends him toBangkok for a six-week trainingprogram for Asian MBAstudents at ChulalongkomUniveniiry These visits aremuch anhcipated, says Lamont,by his children who spent manyof their summer vacations inThailand.

A fi$t-time visitor to thePhilippiruf Dr. tnmont managedto squez! a bit of sighb€eingalongside an already hecticrherlule ttnt hduded apparingon a moming talk show andspeating at AIM'S twGdayconferl'l1ce. His travels outsideMalrila bnutht Lamont to SubicBay where he met with vador-6offcials of the Subic Bay Develo1>m€nt Authority and conductedresearci on the various iointventures cuirently beingestablished at the site of theformer U.S. military bases.

marketing and author of thebest-sliIleL W infi B Wotldul ide :Strutegies for Domiwti g GlobalMn*ets.

A senior lecturer in interna-tional business at the Kellogg

50 APBIL 1994 . THE ASIAN MANAGER

Page 56: The Asian Manager, April 1994 Issue

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Page 57: The Asian Manager, April 1994 Issue

i;;. I fl I lll' . Mlchael a' Hsmrrn

rf=tt, hfgflt crystaria, gazins..

Wo AnExerciseinfuhlristicsPhilippines, two to Hong KonAand dne to Malavsia. fhere ai15 references - aird I meanrefer-ences - to China. Items like

is a rcfteshhgly - if a report bythe World Bank can be calledrefreshhg .perhaps. startlinglyIranx would sound better -straight-forward admission thatthe global economists finally satdown to try to rcallv undersiandwhy, "Fro;r 1965 ta 1990 the 23economies of East Asia qrewfaster than all other regions ofthe world."

And why the high perform-ing Asian economies, "are theon.[y economies (ever) that havehigh growth and declining in-equality. The r€port suggests thatAsia has demonstrated a, "suDe-

rioraccumulation of Dhvsical andhuman capital," which accountsfor much of the region's success.

Our good friend L. GordonCrcvitz - editor and publisherof the Far Eastern Economic Re'�view - wrtJte rn a 1993 year-endsummary, "Asia wason the mindof everyone from brokers Ditch-lng mtitual funds to makirs ofSwiss watches to auctioneers ofWestemfineart."Andaswehaveregularly noted in Tfi e Asian Man-4ger, Vietnam and China werethe hottest inveshnen t prospectsin the world.

But none of this was on theminds of James Dale Davidsonand Lord William Rees-MoAgwhen thev revised and uoda6Jtheirpoptilar 192book,rte GrcatRe ckoning. Yiolence,psuedo-ran-dom phenomenon, non-linearliberaiism, self-replicating mo-lecular machinei and iivinsfinancial ad vice and surviiat tioito North Americans and Euno-peans werc on their minds.

This takes only moments toglean. There are precisely six ref-er€nces to Asia. none to Singa-pore, Thailand and t-he

Japanese labor costs beinRgreater than they are in Chin{European commerce in the Mid-dle Ages being inferior to that inChina, and experimental cancertherapy on ly costing aboutUS$2,000 a day in Chinl.

Really intriguing stuff .Asia does come up in some

pretty interesthg ways. For in-stance, the authors suggest thatdemoqacy never took hold inAsia because the poverty-stricken masses never mad.mough money to afford guns.lfthey had, they could hive de-manded a voice in political af-fairs, l ike North Americanwomen. "It was only whencheap, effective pistols becamewidely available after the CivilWar that women got the vote,"Davidson and Rees-Mogg reveal.

About hvo hundred pagesand three references later, iheauthors provide anotherthought-provoking insight:Asian "govemments come andgo like Elizabeth Taylor's hus-bands." I know of several Asianleaders who will be surprised bythe thoroughness of the authori'research. Of cours€, to b€ fair,they do note that they are reallvthinking in 500-veir cvclej.Which i; puzzling; bo. I\,iosr ofthe authors' wamings are di-rected at North American politi-cal states exclusively less than250 years old in a region of theworld whose history is substan-tially more vague than that ofAsia.

When the authors reachdown to their readers' level toexplain the information revolu-tion, they suggest that, "Perhaps

the best way to understand hownanotechnology wouid work is

to think in terms of magic. " Andperhaps the best was to under-stand what this book is about isto compare it to a horror moviethat promised to scare the williesout ofyou but doesn't. You sortof keep watching the movie be-cause you can't believe it. Mostlyyou can't believe that you keepwatching it.

Here's some of the ways youare supposed to get scared:

. Like all true revolutions,the Information Revolutionis also a revolution ofpowerMiniaturized technologiesminiaturize institutions. Intime, the microchip will de-stroy the nation-state. It willgive small groups and evenindividuals the capacity toemploy violence in ways thatcoulct overfu rn govemmentsand destroy large organiza-tions.As if these things never hap-

pened before the micochip.. The lawn mower of the In-formation Age will come inan envelope. It will not bepushed but planted. Geneticengineering ofgrass s€ed will

. producenew bpesof turf thatautomatically grow to an op-timum height - and thenstop. The new bio-engineeredgrass will require neither fer-tilizer nor insecticides.It willmake lawn mowers obsolete.I, for one, don't mind giving

" 'Asiangovernments, 'wdte the authoF,'come and go likeElizabethTaylor 'shusbands."'

Til@

he popular 193 re-pott, The East AsianMiracle, publishedby the World Bank,

up my lawnmower. Actually, Ithink this is a cute idea.

. As Jeffrey MacGillvray ofthe MIT NanotechnologyStudy Group asks, "Whjt

forms of human labor willstill be of value after self-rep-licating molecular machinesprovide material goods in vir-tually ur imited quantity atalmost zero cost?"Cee, no wonder Deng Xiao-

ping's been losing sleep.Even if the autho6 were con-

cemed about Asia, it would beapretty gory scenario they wouldpaint:

. Contrarytowhatyoumightsuppose, the danger of sud-den heart attack is greatestwhen the heart beats mostregularly. Similarly, the dan-Berof (economic) system fail-ure may be increased in manycases by policies that aim tostabilize present conditions.But then the authors suggest

that it is precis€ly the irregulari-ties which we must be on thewatch for:

r You may need to anticipatediscontinuities in ordei toavoid being overwhelmedbytnem.And you may need to avoid

this book to avoid beingunderwhelmed as well. But theauthors do deserve credit forputting forti some interestingideas, mostly foLrnd in chapternine, "The Remaking of the Crx-mopolitan Mind."

But th.is is a best-seling book,and forAsian managers wlio wantto know what their customers incritical Westrem markets are look-ingforwad bandworryingaboutthe prirrc of admission will prob-ably yield a rcaxrnable retum. I

Davidson, James Dale and WilliamRees-Mogg rr, C,rd/ R..k,r,rl,(New Y'rl Simon & S.huster, lv92),.r90 pp.

52APRIL 1 994 . THE ASIAN MANAGEB

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BANGKOK RESERVATIONS CENTRF-: TEL: (66 2) 238'4790'5, TELEFAX (66 2\ 238-4797,TELFX:8rr10 TH

Page 59: The Asian Manager, April 1994 Issue