New Frontiers in International Strategy
Author(s): Joan Enric Ricart, Michael J. Enright, Pankaj Ghemawat, Stuart L. Hart, Tarun
Khanna
Source: Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3 (May, 2004), pp. 175-200
Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3875144
Accessed: 05/04/2010 11:55
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=pal.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Palgrave Macmillan Journals is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of
International Business Studies.
http://www.jstor.org

Journal of International Business Studies (2004) 35, 75-200
? 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 0047-2506 $25.00
www.jibs.net
PERSPECTIVE
New frontiers in international strategy
Joan Enric Ricart’, Michael J
Enright2, Pankaj Ghemawat3,
Stuart L Hart4 and Tarun
Khanna3
’IESE Business School, University of Navarra,
Barcelona, Spain; 2School of Business, University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; 3Harvard Business
School, Harvard University, Boston, USA;
4johnson School of Management, Cornell
University, Ithaca, USA
Correspondence: JE Ricart, IESE Business
School, University of Navarra, Avda.
Pearson, 21, Barcelona 08034, Spain
Tel: + 93 253 42 00
Fax: +93 253 43 43
E-mail: ricart@iese.edu
Abstract
This paper studies a new frontier in the understanding of International Strategy
(IS). To explore it, we propose the analogy of the ecology of firms and places as
a way to emphasize that the real problem is the colocation of different places
with different types of firms. Locations are in fact the distinctive content of
International Business Strategy. We deal with this problem with four different
perspectives. First, differences across countries must be addressed with
integrative frameworks able to represent the multidimensionality of ’semiglo-
balization’, or intermediate states between total localization and total
integration. Second, differences in the development of intermediary markets
in a particular place influence firm positioning and industry structure in that
place, but their impact also crosses different places, and it is endogenous to the
ecology of places and firms in a systemic, integrative way that makes
simplifications extremely risky in the design of competitive strategy in an
international context. Third, places, firms, and strategies form a complex
ecology that can be studied with a framework focused in understanding the
geography-strategy link that incorporates different levels of analysis, new
economic actors, and a set of primitives. Finally, firms around the ecology of
places face the challenge of developing strategies and business models to serve
the majority of humanity today excluded from world trade. It is a
fundamentally different way to think about the ecology of places and firms.
Overall, we present an intriguing New Frontier, with the capacity to impact
both research and practice in the field of international strategy, based in
understanding the interplay among firms and places.
Journal of International Business Studies (2004) 35, 175-200.
doi: I 0. I 057/palgrave.jibs.8400080
Keywords: international strategy; globalization; emerging markets; markets and
institutions
Introduction
International business research has focused on a number of issues
directly linked to firm strategy. In the 1970s and 1980s, many of
the issues of interest in the strategy field, such as industry
environments, market share-performance linkages, positioning
and generic strategies, market and customer selection, oligopolistic
strategies, and diversification, had their counterparts in the
international business literature. In many cases, international
business researchers addressed much the same questions as strategy
researchers, with the added complexity either of studying manage-
ment across multiple country operations or of performing
comparative studies. In other cases, such as diversification,
international business researchers focused on geographic diversifi-
cation, while strategy researchers focused on industry diversifica-
tion. Transaction cost theories of the firm were developed more or
Received: 17 November 2003
Revised: 10 February 2004
Accepted: 12 February 2004
Online publication date: 22 April 2004