Growth Strategies of the New Multinationals

Emerging market multinationals have expanded around the world and upgraded their capabilities at the speed of light using aggressive growth strategies. This chapter argues that the success of these companies lies on new axioms of global competitiveness. It aims to answer two questions. First, do these firms share some common distinctive features that distinguish them from the traditional MNEs? Second, how have they been able to expand abroad at dizzying speed, in defiance of the conventional wisdom about the virtues of a staged, incremental approach to international expansion? Before being in a position to answer these questions, the established theory of the MNE is outlined, and the extent to which its basic postulates need to be re-examined is explored.