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Chapter 2: Designing a global strategy

(1) The distribution of sales and assets of General Motors, the US cars and trucks manufacturer, is shown
below:
NAFTA Europe Asia Rest of World
Unit sales 5,874,000 1,968,000 421,000 523,000
Personnel 217,000 87,000 10,000 23,000
What is GM’s position on a GCI/GRI mapping?
(2) In your opinion, in which industry could London (UK) be a ‘key’ country – Italy? Australia?
(3) What could be the benefits of positioning oneself as a standardised global niche differentiator (see
Table 2.3)? What kind of competitive advantages does it require?
(4) What are the capabilities needed to be a broad adaptive cost leader?
(5) What are the ways to sustain competitive advantage?
(6) What types of competitive advantages does being a first mover provide?
(7) Can you sketch the mapping of the value chain for:
(a) A consulting firm
(b) An airline
(c) A trading firm
(d) A corporate and investment bank?
(8) For each of the entities in Question 7 (a)–(d), can you represent a possible global distribution of their
value chain, as illustrated in Figure 2.8?