Frontier Strategy Group - Emerging Market Insights

Multinationals’ success in ASEAN will depend heavily on their ability to develop local talent. Unfortunately, few companies have developed talent strategies adapted to the region’s unique landscape. In this podcast, we discuss a recently released report that will help companies tailor their talent management programs to ASEAN’s regional nuances.

Multinationals must manage their sales forces effectively as a critical step toward achieving profitable growth in the Chinese market; however, geographical and demographic complexity, rising wages, and a highly competitive talent market have made sales force management in the country increasingly challenging for multinationals

Belarus will have another difficult year in 2016. Further recession and lack of reforms will complicate the business environment and cloud the country's outlook. MNCs need to prepare for this environment through careful planning now. In this podcast, FSG expert advisor Andrew Wilson discusses what companies should expect from Belarus in 2016.

In the third year of its flagship report, Events to Watch, FSG helps clients to identify key disruptors that should be incorporated into their scenario plans for the coming year. Our experience is that clients that have demonstrated the most resilient performance embed scenario and contingency plans into their strategic planning process.

Rapid decentralization, under which states are becoming key players in policymaking, necessitates a regional opportunity assessment in India. With this in mind, FSG has built a city prioritization framework for India, which categorizes city clusters in India into super, emerging, and frontier clusters. This approach will influence MNCs’ talent, organizational, channel, and product strategies

FSG believes India is shifting toward a higher growth trajectory, and we expect that the country’s GDP will expand by 7.75% annually through 2020. India’s five-year growth forecasts make it the world’s fastest-growing major emerging economy. Executives need to understand how reform expectations and state-level policies will affect strategic plans and resource allocation decisions in India

Azerbaijan is going to face a difficult 2016 and MNCs need to be prepared for a rapidly changing market and adjust expectations. In particular, firms will have to prepare for a significant devaluation of the currency and a sharp downturn in government spending in 2016.

China’s stock market crash has called into question its leaders’ capacity to steer the country through economic transition. While the government has tools to smooth the slowdown in overall growth, bad debt still threatens to destabilize the financial system. In this podcast, we discuss our recent report on these issues and identify markets that are at risk if China takes a turn for the worse.

FSG's CEO, Rich Leggett interviews Lauren Goodwin, Practice Leader of Global Economics on her global outlook in 2016. This podcast summarizes Lauren's recent report and dives into global economic drivers for 2016 and their implications for multinational business strategy and performance.

Southern Africa offers SSA’s best operating environment, and with a nominal GDP of US$ 587 billion in 2014, it is the second-largest region in SSA. MNCs tend to focus on the region’s biggest markets, South Africa and Angola, but as both countries are facing tough economic times, executives need to look beyond for new growth opportunities in the region.