Source: Accenture Outlook Journal
















A century ago, only about one in seven people in the world lived in a city. Today, half the population does, and that percentage is growing steadily every year. And as more and more people migrate to major urban centers, the influence of cities—their technologies, businesses, forms of government, resource consumption, the quality of life they enable and much more—rises significantly.
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What was the brand manager thinking?
There he was, thousands of miles from the home office, pitching an idea for a product that would be expensive and require the company to develop new manufacturing capabilities. Surely the idea would get vetoed by headquarters . . . right?


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When Lenovo announced its $1.75 billion acquisition of IBM’s personal computer division in December 2004, the size of the deal was only part of what caught the world’s attention. Even more important was the symbolism. Here was a Chinese company swooping in to capture an iconic US brand—an event that signaled the arrival of Chinese truly global companies on the world stage.
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In 2001, a US medical device maker expanded its product line to include a new heart defibrillator it had acquired from another company—despite the fact that it didn’t have the manufacturing and engineering skills needed to meet the strict regulatory requirements associated with marketing the new product.

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It’s become something of a mantra among some of the world’s biggest corporations: To grow out of the downturn and beyond, tap into the tantalizing prospects of emerging markets.
Easier said, perhaps, than done. Accenture’s 2010 Global Consumer Research clearly shows that reaching and retaining consumers in emerging economies can be challenging indeed.


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For all their best intentions, and for all the amazing powers technology has afforded them, IT professionals through the years have often felt constricted in terms of their ability to support their organizations with timely and agile solutions.
Technologies and systems haven’t always been nimble. Although IT executives wished for materials that were more malleable, what they had to work with was more like stone than clay.
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