Winning in Asia: Strategies for Competing in the New Millennium

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Summary: The tigers are roaring again
Review: Asia is the happening place in the twenty first century and no business can afford to miss this opportunity. The rapid growth witnessed in the region during the 1990's was suddenly halted by the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Now that the storm is over, a new game has started. This book is about winning this round of the game.

Asia has her own distinctive culture and business traditions, inherent strengths and weaknesses. Till 1997, most of the national economies operated in isolation and local companies enjoyed this protection. Companies resorted to opportunistic diversification, often into unrelated businesses, and profited through rent collection, asset inflation and arbitrage opportunities. The focus of operations was on commoditization and manufacturing efficiencies. Meanwhile one should also recognize the traditional strengths of Asian businesses in terms of building local networks through relationships, speed of response to grab opportunities and adaptation to change.

In the new game post the crisis of 1997, new strategies need to be adopted for success in Asia. This applies to both Asian companies, multinationals operating in Asia and the new alliances that emerge between Asian companies and the big players from outside.

Firstly the national fiefdoms have been broken and Asian countries while attracting foreign investments are also simultaneously encouraging national companies to invest abroad. The Asian customer is also becoming more demanding in terms of variety and quality of goods and services.

The book highlights five major areas that need to be addressed by companies in Asian markets :

1. Step change in productivity - The focus here is on total productivity and not just manufacturing costs, and the need to improve supply chain efficiencies and administrative processes.
2. Innovation - Asia suffers from innovation deficit as shown by the very low investments as percentage of corporate revenues spent on innovation. Asia has traditionally valued investments in tangible assets and not on building intangible assets.
3. Branding - Of the top 60 global brands, only 4 are from Asia - 3 from Japan (Sony, Toyota and Honda) and one from Korea (Samsung). Value creation and capture is the core concept of branding.
4. Creating a new breed of Asian Multinationals - Ability to work across borders as Pan-Asian companies with integrated operations and not just investments abroad.
5. Consolidating the Asian playing field - Ability to shape rather than to be dictated by changes in the new game.

A chapter each is devoted to the topics listed above and the issues are discussed in detail. Excellent examples of some business cases aid the understanding of concepts.

The book is unbiased, objective, well researched and presented in logical steps resulting in a model for strategy formulation for winning in the new Asian game. The scope of this book is largely limited to ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan and Korea). The rest of Asia, India in particular, deserves another book.

While Asia is a new and big opportunity of this century, the author aptly concludes that there will be a sharper divide between winners and losers. This book will certainly help us to be on the better side of this divide.

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Summary: Invaluable insights into doing business in Asia
Review: Winning in Asia is an extremely successful hybrid of academic study and managerial handbook. The author's arguments are backed by strong use of data analysis together with the lighter touch of anecdotal evidence - all written in a style which is highly accessible. The result is a book which stands out from the sea of `Asia management' titles, as having foundation, credibility, originality and a practical purpose!

While the book speaks strongly to managers of Asian companies, it contains equally as thoughtful advice to foreign companies operating in the region (both in terms of what they can expect from local players and how they might start thinking about strategy for the future.). Throughout, the author warns against the commonly held presumption that Asia should and will evolve into something that mimics US-style market capitalism and he paints a convincing picture to back his assertion.

Williamson begins by taking the reader on a brief journey to explore the Asian boom, subsequent crisis and current drivers of change across the region. He then identifies what he sees as the five key challenges for the future: increasing total productivity, innovation, building brands, internationalisation and consolidation.

But before dedicating a chapter to each of the challenges he introduces the reader to Asia as he sees it. And this is as a complex patchwork made up of seven distinct groups - some which are country specific, while others span the region. The characteristics (both good and bad) of these groups are then seamlessly woven into the following chapters in which Williamson first defines the `problem' of each challenge before going on to outline a range of strategies to overcome these.

One of the very appealing aspects of this book is that far from delivering the strategic options in a condescending, prescriptive tone, Williamson discusses the merits and potential drawbacks of each approach, gently prompting the reader to explore new territory.

All-in-all, Winning in Asia is an invaluable book. It's well thought out, well researched and well delivered.