Throughout the 1990s, financial investors, corporate strategists, and political leaders in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan have been intensifying their focus on emerging markets. Such companies as Morgan Stanley, General Electric, and Johnson & Johnson are placing enormous bets on these markets. The Clinton administration’s export-promotion strategy is based on the premise that the most promising markets are not in Europe and Japan but in the so-called big emerging markets. And the U.S. approach is mirrored abroad as presidents and prime ministers from France to Japan make pilgrimages to China, India, Brazil, and elsewhere to hawk their countries’ wares.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 1997 issue of Harvard Business Review.