This retreat could become even more pronounced in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States last September. As a consequence, many MNCs worldwide slowed investments and began to rethink risk–reward structures for these markets. To make matters worse, the Asian and Latin American financial crises have greatly diminished the attractiveness of emerging markets. Although this significant economic and social transformation has offered vast new growth opportunities for multinational corporations (MNCs), its promise has yet to be realized.įirst, the prospect of millions of “middle-class” consumers in developing countries, clamoring for products from MNCs, was wildly oversold. With the end of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union and its allies, as well as China, India, and Latin America, opened their closed markets to foreign investment in a cascading fashion. Prahalad’s daughter, updated a portion of the argument in s+b.
The prophetic article was followed by the best-selling 2004 book of the same title. Prahalad and Stuart Hart, professors at the University of Michigan and North Carolina, respectively, urged leaders to imagine the world’s 4 billion poorest people as potential consumers - and described precisely how they could engage them profitably. S+b celebrating 25 years: In January 2002, C.K.
