Going international

Abstract

Beating the competition is always satisfying; and beating the competition on their home ground is especially satisfying. This is widely accepted as true in sport, but it is no less so in business. During the interviews on which this report is based, the satisfaction of those managers being interviewed, who had challenged foreign firms in their home market and succeeded, was obvious, and even exciting to both managers and interviewers alike. Of course it is necessary to record as fully those interviews where the venture was a failure and those interviews, embarrassing for all concerned, where the venture was a fiasco. This book concentrates upon these differences in levels of success and failure in going international in the belief that the experiences of the persons interviewed — whether associated with success or failure — contain valuable lessons for other managers considering going international. The lessons should tilt the scales toward success when those other managers make their own firm international.