Yes, you read that right - the guys at Valuecruncher report that shares in the once-mighty GM (”What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”) have hit a 53 year low. And even that price looks dodgy, given the outlook for US big car and sports utility sales.  You can play with Valuecruncher’s assumptions (they have a nice online model for you to use) and see if you agree.

How can a company with the resources that GM has, its ability to buy whatever talent, technology and business concept it needs, how can it have fallen to this? The only systemic problems are its own culture and modus operandi.  Everything else can be fixed.  Can the culture?

So why do you really want to sell your business? There are actually many possible answers to this opening question. Here are a few of the more common ones:

1. You don’t want to sell any time in the next 10 years, but you’re making sure that if you if and when you do, you’re able to do so.
2. You don’t have any plans to sell any time in the next ten years, but someone might make you a great offer and you’d like to be able to respond effectively, without throwing a spanner in the works. (This is smart – many businesses go off the rails trying to handle a sales process, expected or unexpected).
3. You’re planning to retire sometime in the next few years and you’d like to sell it for the best possible deal.
4. You need to retire immediately and you need the best possible deal
5. You want out, but you’d like to keep a stake for old time’s sake and to show your continued faith in the business.
6. You want some cash for other things, but you’d like to stay in control.
7. You think you’ve taken the business as far as you can, and it’s probably worth more to someone else than you.
8. You reckon that the business is going well today, but its future isn’t that great if it stays as a standalone entity.
9. You’ve got another more exciting project and you want to get some or all of your money out to pursue that.
10. The business is just not as good as you’d hoped and you want out.
11. The business is a dog and you want out now while there’s still something left.
12. You’re bored/exasperated/overwhelmed by the business.
13. Your co-shareholders are dysfunctional/unrealistic/broke/ etc/etc - meaning expansion, major transactions, capital raising, share issue and board appointments are virtually impossible; the only way out is to sell the darned thing.
14. Some of your fellow shareholders want out, but you can’t afford to buy them out.
15. You want out, but your fellow shareholders can’t afford to buy you out.
16. You don’t want to sell the business to anyone else outside the firm, but you’d like to pass it on to family, staff, or an employee trust sometime (having taken enough to give you a comfortable retirement).

There are many more, but you see why I ask the question. Each answer (or combination of answers) puts a very different slant on the way we might think about the business strategy and any preparation for sale. You and your inner cabinet need to be honest about the reasons for selling, so you can plan accordingly.

Reading Mark Di Somma’s closing question on Branding Big:

Who does your brand reflect – the company you are today, or the entity you have the potential to be?

I knew what the answer must be.  My closing line in my set-piece talk on strategic thinking is:

Think and act for greatness!

Timidity may see you survive, but greatness goes to the bold.

One lesson I learned from “doing business” with Māori  in New Zealand was that you will usually be appreciated for showing respect for people’s culture and social manners, some more from having a few words in their language (a lot more if you can hold a conversation, which I can’t), but it’s more important that you should be true to yourself, honest, straight-dealing and not treat other people as stereotypes.

I’ve had a modicum of success doing business in Asia by applying the same approach.  Comprising many nations, often with several (or many) ethnic groupings, Asia has a rich variety of cultures.  Each one is different.  One thing we never did was treat “Asians” as if they are one homogeneous group. What I found was that, as in any society, people form a wide spectrum of individual characteristics, albeit with a central grouping around stereotypical societal characteristics.  What I also never did was assume that Japanese are like Koreans are like Chinese (or Malays, Indonesians, Indians, Saudis, Turks, etc.).

Unfortunately many Europeans and North Americans do fall into this trap.  I remember getting very incensed by one guest lecturer (at a Wharton programme no less, where normally the faculty is excellent) spouting utter claptrap about doing business with “South Americans” (who she said are all excitable, morally conservative, like bright colours, and only do business through familial networks) and “Asians” (who she said are all reserved, prefer to work with trusted long-term partners, and have little respect for contracts). Some maybe, but all 4 billion? Incredible!

Notwithstanding all that, I also buy the idea that a true global brand has a single global persona. However, if you are marketing a global brand, or even a regional one, in Asia, or elsewhere for that matter, how do you achieve this while respecting local differences (without  massive duplication of costs and blurred messages)? The answer lies in having a genuinely transnational market offer, backed with genuinely transnational promotion.

Business Pundit pointed me to a report in Chicago University’s Journal of Consumer Research on East Asian businesses which have created successful pan-East Asian campaigns with a common market offer:

Authors Julien Cayla (University of New South Wales) and Giana M. Eckhardt  (Suffolk University) examine how marketers of Asian brands are creating an imaginary Asia that is not identifiable by country or region. “Cultural referents from cities of influence such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Seoul are combined together to produce brand images that are clearly Asian, but not from a particular nation,” write the authors.

The researchers analyzed marketing strategies and advertising campaigns of Asian brands such as Tiger Beer and Zuji, a travel website. They found that images in the print, ad, and online advertising represent an Asia that is “global, urban, and multicultural.” In the case of the travel website Zuji, the researchers found that the consortium of major airlines “has no home country, is designed to be clearly Asian and modern, uses a Hong Kong-born globally popular actor as the brand’s model, uses green and blue for the logo to appeal to the Thai, its name is derived from Mandarin, follows the spatial practices of feng shui, uses an East Asian style of calligraphy, and uses the tagline “Your Travel Guru,” which is most readily associated with India.”

Such cultural mixing, according to the authors, demonstrates that Asian corporations are redefining globalization. “Whereas Western Marketers still sell Asian brands through the idea of an exotic, feminine Asia, Asian marketers create campaigns with a more contemporary, modern, and urban vision of Asia,” write the authors.

In other words, you can make a universal offer with a universal promotional campaign, albeit in multiple languages. The trick is to always treat people as individuals while doing so. Fulfilling common needs and aspirations is not the same as treating people as stereotypes.

Yesterday I wrote about the possible challenges for owners of established midsize businesses who want to exit their investment.  In an  occasional series, I’ll cover how to address those challenges.  I’ll be drawing on my experience of being involved as a CEO, owner, director and/or adviser of mid-size businesses undergoing or thinking about ownership change, as well as having been involved in pre- and post-deal situations on both the buying and selling side (mid-size and large size).

Your exit might be many years away, but it’s never too soon to start planning for it. These are some questions I’d be exploring with you:

1. Why are you selling?
2. What exactly does your business offer the world?
3. What are your goals and dreams - inside the business, outside the business and after the business?
4. How attractive is your business, and what’s wrong with it?
5. Who are your key people, customers, suppliers and partners, and are you vulnerable to their departure?
6. How do you make yourself unnecessary to the business?
7. Which buyer types should you target?
8. Who would want to buy it and why; who should, but doesn’t, and why not?
9. Should you sell gradually or all at once?
10. Should you sell to family and/or staff?
11. What should you do to improve your business attractiveness?
12. What should you do to be ready for sale?
13. How do you manage the sale process? Part I, Part II
14. What’s in a good sale agreement for you, and for your buyer?
15. How do you ensure a successful transfer?
16. How much should you be involved after the deal is done?

The best way to have a great business to sell is to have a great business. Actions you’d do to prepare your business for sale are often actions you should do anyway. The answers to these questions and the ensuing discussion will help you formulate a business plan with successful exit in mind.  I’ll be addressing each of them over the next few months.

PS. I have other questions when looking at raising capital for expansion and when looking at an acquisition, but those are for another time.

There’s a real problem developing for many private companies whose owners are contemplating exit.   They expect that they’ll be able to sell their businesses when they’re ready to retire, but who to?

The NZ Herald notes that 35-45 year olds, who should be the next generation of business owners, are much smaller in number than the baby-boomer generation looking to retire, both because of lower birth rates and because of a higher proportion living overseas.  From a survey of companies with turnovers between $5 million and $150 million, the NZH reports that:

• 59% of medium-sized firms are run by people over 50; 23% are run by people over 60.
• 63% of owners are concerned about who will take over; 17% have done something about it.
• 42 per cent of owners had family members working in the business and almost as many (38 per cent) thought they were capable of taking over; but only 24 per cent believed they could afford to.
• Forty per cent would consider selling to management, but only 18 per cent regarded that as financially feasible.

These stats are probably replicated in many developed countries. They explain why so many business owners (74%) expect their exit will be achieved by a trade sale (i.e. to another business). While many owners would love to sell their businesses to their own teams, the reality is that the virtually no employee can afford to buy an established mid-size business.  You don’t make that kind of money working for someone else.

So the obvious solution is to sell to another business. But here’s the next problem. Unless your business is big enough and successful enough to attract the attention of much larger players with the available cash and the potential to do even more with your business than you have, who will want to buy it?  Most other similar midsize businesses are not cash rich, and their owners want out too.  Well yes, but you’ve had a special relationship with that larger international firm with whom you share big deals and technology - they’ll be sure to want to buy your business. Unfortunately your golden parachute maker either doesn’t have the wherewithal or simply isn’t interested in actually owning your business.

Starting to get the picture?  Fortunately, there are some things you can do, and I’ll be exploring them in future writings.

The veteran activist shareholder Carl Icahn has finally started to write on his own personal weblog.  An early February launch was followed by several months of silence, which perplexed many (including yours truly).  However, the wait is over, with The Icahn Report posting several previously prepared invectives on boards, CEOs and poison pills, to mention a few.  It’s all classic Icahn, and worth reading, even if it is very USA-centric. Enjoy.

Today The Times published its annual rankings of 113 UK universities, based on 8 performance indicators:

• Student satisfaction
• Research quality
• Qualifications of new undergraduates (higher indicates more stringent entry standards)
• Student staff ratio
• Services and facilities spending per student
• Percentage of students achieving a degree or transferring to other institutions
• Percentage of graduates achieving first or upper second class honours degrees
• Percentage of graduates in graduate level employment or further study six months after graduation.

These criteria are not universally accepted and are not comprehensive, eg. graduate salaries 2 years after graduation might be a useful indicator, but is harder to compile.  Despite that, the Times rankings have achieved a degree of acceptance as one useful indicator of institutional standing, and are eagerly studied by students, parents, academics and bureaucrats.

The Top 10 are:

1. Oxford
2. Cambridge
3. Imperial College
4. London School of Economics
5. St Andrews
6. Warwick
7. University College London
8. Durham
9. York
10. Bristol

The Times’ league tables  have a host of information by subject area, disability, ethnicity, etc..  Although Oxford may top the overall rankings, when it comes to subject area rankings, Cambridge is top in 37 out of 61 individual subjects, whereas Oxford is top in just 5.

One of the least surprising findings is that 3 years after graduating, one third of graduates wish they’d chosen a different course.

I’m afraid my alma mater Brunel has been slipping down the rankings and now sits in the middle at #52.  Because of my responsibilities as a board member of New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission, I also keep an eye on Sheffield at #22 and Birmingham at #25: by some measures these equate roughly with the best NZ universities. (That’s not an official TEC position, by the way; it is a hotly disputed comparison!)

Here’s an eye-popping chart for you - country shares of global cement production/use, courtesy of The Oil Drum. Now my understanding is that while buildings (and Olympic venues) are obviously a significant element in demand, the bigger driver is new infrastructure.  Also note that India in 2nd place is also a stand-out, even though it’s a long way behind China. Bob the Builder is keeping himself busy!

NB. these figures do include export production but it is so tiny as to not alter the numbers materially.

I’ve got a new word for my small, but growing collection of useful foreign phrases and euphemisms: schlimmbesserung. It’s a German term for a well-meaning improvement which actually makes things worse. We’ve all encountered those and, truth be told, we’ve all implemented a few as well. So now whenever someone suggests that you throw out that proven milling machine/application software/bonus scheme for something new and whizzy, you can ask them to reassure you that it won’t be a schlimmbesserung. No-one will know what you mean, but you’ll sound very cosmopolitan. And it’s always good to get one back on the jargoneers.

Anyone got any others?

I still reckon my carbon tax scheme is the simplest I’ve heard: a straight tax, with exports zero rated and imports fully rated, which avoids any issues of losing out to non-participating countries. So far, no takers, but let’s see if anyone can improve on it.

I applied the French derogatory term usine à gaz or ‘gas factory‘ to cap & trade carbon emission schemes. The FT’s Willem Buiter describes the assertion that Cap & Trade is more efficient than a straight carbon tax as baloney, while NZ’s Queen Bee begs the nation’s leaders “Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot” with their proposed emissions trading regime. Queen Bee also pointed me to an article on the Wall St Journal :

… Republicans methodically dismantled the cost and complexity of “cap and trade,” which sounds harmless but would inflict collateral damage on the wider economy in lost GDP and higher prices up and down the energy chain. Conveniently, the Democrats would also bestow unto Congress (read: themselves) some $6.7 trillion in new tax revenues and carbon welfare handouts over the next four decades.

Ignoring the party politics, here’s a further thought. Politicians have dithered and dithered over this issue, and by going for complex (and unworkable) schemes they may have missed the bus, at least for now. The market mechanism (at least for oil) of scarcity = high prices = alternative technologies looks like it’s kicking in and doing a far simpler and more effective job than anything the politicians could have devised, except that the financial benefits will now flow offshore. Costs from Carbon C&T or Carbon Tax schemes will raise the price of energy and flow through into the wider economy (howevermuch politicians waffle that it won’t) and I will lay odds that the costs will not be fully offset by lower taxes elsewhere, but who’s going to be brave/mad enough to impose any carbon regime in this current oil price environment? (!)

“If every company uses the same commodity information tools, they will have commodity productivity levels.“ That’s a quote from Alan Kay, a leading pioneer of what might be called 4G computing - eg. networked personal computers and object-oriented programming. He was talking to John Sviokla, who has written a thought-provoking short article “Commoditized Technology and Commoditized Results.”

There is a real dilemma. Do I use these feature-rich off-the-shelf solutions, which may keep me on a par with my competitors, or do I build something unique (and by implication slower to implement, much more expensive, and more likely to fail)? IT’s reputation for cost-overruns, under-delivery, late delivery and failed projects) even with packaged solutions) has meant that many firms do not allow their IT organisations much influence on true business strategy and development. Many firms spend most or all of their IT money on running fast to stay still, and begrudge even that.

There is plenty of blame to share around. Many business executives do not understand the difference between competitive advantage and competitive necessity. Sviokla himself shows this confusion, despite his article’s title:

For example, I was talking with the CIO of a multi-billion dollar military contractor… He reported … that … the typical engineer spent 30% of their time looking for information, and that 30% of their expenses were engineering salaries, which meant that 9% of their entire cost base was spent searching for information. Putting Google in would not help this problem because the firm’s data is not made up of web pages and typical documents. Despite this huge cost, they did not have a single person dedicated to creating customized search tools to drive increased productivity of their engineers.

It sounds like a prima facie case to make an IT investment, but this is a common productivity problem, not a source of long term competitive advantage. If they invest, they may reduce their costs and/or increase their time to do other things, but then so can anyone else.

Long-term competitive advantage comes from doing things or having things that other people will find hard to replicate. That usually means hard-to-get know-how, hard-to-replicate processes, hard-to-subvert relationships (brands, sales, channels, supply channels, etc.) or hard-to-obtain scarce resources (minerals, access rights, networks). Even new-age weightless businesses which started out with bright product/service ideas like Google, Ebay and TradeMe now owe a lot of their competitive advantage from having built hard-to-subvert relationships.

Business executives need to ask themselves the hard questions. What strategic difference will this IT project really make, versus other uses of our business investment budget? Is it a source of genuine competitive advantage, or a productivity advantage which may be duplicated eventually, or just catch-up, or even (and this one is really scary) not actually necessary at all?

Just one word of warning. Don’t fool yourselves that your so-called hard-to-replicate processes, know-how, relationships, and resources are really long term competitive advantages. I know one large international firm which fell for its own hype. They bet their business (and nearly lost it) on building a unique solution to a common requirement. Some of their core business processes were revolutionary in the 80s, and needed a home-built system which had outlived any technology or skills to run or maintain it. However, the old guard believed (wrongly) that they couldn’t get similar functionality from standard packages today. They argued that these systems were so fundamental to the firm’s processes that a massive bespoke redevelopment was justified, despite several advisers telling them otherwise. They wasted 5 years, many millions of dollars, and hobbled their ability to undertake any acquisitions at a time when their industry was undergoing massive consolidation. The company finally scrapped the project, heads rolled, and the firm adopted a system from one of its few acquisitions.

Product serial numbering schemes don’t usually occupy much head space in the typical brand and marketing team, but there’s every reason to give them more thought. Serial numbers are often critical in identifying and solving customer service issues. The military invented a system of phonetic spelling (initially Able, Baker, Charlie; later Alpha, Bravo, Charlie) because it’s easy to mis-say and mis-hear spelt out letters on poor telephone or wireless links (and not just when someone’s shelling you). Reading out a string of apparently random numbers and letters to a service rep is even more fraught.

Marketing writer Seth Godin has come up with some practical suggestions for improving serial numbers: don’t have letters O , I, l, and numbers 0, 1; make letters case-interchangeable A/a; etc., etc.. One more innovative idea is to substitute words for numbers. That got me thinking: you can make serial numbers part of your brand personality.

Let me illustrate. Compile a list of four-letter words - ideally ones that relate to your brand. Make sure they can be used in combination with each other. Your serial number is made up of any three words, and words can be used more than once. Say we have just 3 such words in our list: A=baby, B=blue, C=eyes. I get 27 combinations:

• AAA = baby baby baby
• AAB = baby baby blue
• AAC = baby baby eyes
• ABA = baby blue baby
• ABB = baby blue blue
• ABC = baby blue eyes
• ACA etc.

Saying “baby baby blue” rather than AAB is a lot simpler and more fun for customers and service staff to read, say and hear. A list of just 100 words will give you 1 million 3-word combinations. Online data entry forms can handle this kind of thing very easily so it won’t create work and should reduce serial number errors (the same idea applies to check digits too). And while we’re at it, what about your product naming and numbering systems, accounr numbers, invoice numbers, etc.?

Word-based numbering systems won’t work with every brand or product, and maybe only in markets with a common language, but why not get your team to play with the idea? You could develop a whole new, complementary aspect of your brand personality. You could even end up creating a new cachet for your product, as cool serial numbers attract interest and make the product more personalised.

This idea may or may not add to your brand, but it might at least start people putting more brand and design thinking into your numbering systems.

More than 55 international economists, including 5 Nobel Laureates, have been working for two years to assess more than 50 solutions, provide an in-depth assessment of the costs and benefits of those solutions, and prioritize them to address some of the biggest challenges faced by the world. The project, known as the Copenhagen Consensus, has recently released its report. What are the problems to be addressed?

In alphabetical order:

• Air pollution
• Conflicts
• Disease
• Education
• Global warming
• Malnutrition and hunger
• Sanitation and water
• Subsidies and trade barriers
• Terrorism
• Women and development

To make the project plausible, the panel had a notional budget of US$75 billion to spend over 4 years. They selected 30 initiatives, ranked in order of effectiveness for the money spent. The summary of the recommended solutions (available online as a .pdf document download) makes for fascinating reading. There will be some very surprised faces in the major developed countries (or maybe not). The top ranked recommendation is supplying micro-nutrients to children in poor countries. This achieves a dramatic payback for a relatively small amount. Sounds very commendable. However, the second highest ranked recommendation is to implement the Doha trade liberalisation agenda - ie. free trade including agriculture will do more good in the world than every other initiative bar one.

The recommended projects and the proposed budget are all doable. We can only hope that they will be given serious consideration by those who decide such things.

I’ve just read a fascinating (for me at least) study commissioned by Britain’s Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills: the 2008 Value Added Scoreboard, which ranks the top 750 European companies. Value Added for this purpose is defined as sales less costs of bought-in goods and services. Alternatively you add employee costs to operating profit before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and impairment (EBITDA), which are all shown in European and UK company financial reports.

The results are very encouraging for the UK. About 23% of “added value” by Europe’s top 750 firms came from the UK’s top 175 companies. Germany was the next most productive country, making up 19.7% of the total, with France (18.5%) in third place. Royal Dutch Shell, BP, HSBC, Vodafone and the Royal Bank of Scotland were the UK’s top performers, Leading non-UK firms were DaimlerChrysler (2nd), French oil firm Total (3rd) and Russian energy group Gazprom (5th).

The online database allows you to also rank companies by several other productivity measures - again the Brits tend to dominate the cumulative results. Watch out for real estate, finance, mining, energy and utility firms (of course the UK is very strong in all these sectors). They are special cases and make comparison with other sectors difficult, but here are some eye-popping numbers:

• VA per employee: First place went to Spain’s Corporacion Financiera Alba with UKP14. 6 million each; imagine the pay and bonuses! In the real world, Porsche was the highest ranked manufacturer with UKP464k VA per employee.
• VA as a percentage of the cost of bought-in goods and services: In first place was French property firm Gecina at 3424%! In the real world, Porsche again led with 422% VA as a percentage of bought-in costs.

Of course, value-added as defined here is just one indicator, in effect a company’s contribution to the economy, so governments like it. Doing a lot of stuff in-house might give you a higher VA score, but doesn’t necessarily make you a better business, eg. from an investment perspective; you’d need to investigate the underlying numbers. But the VA scoreboard database looks like a useful research resource.

You can also download the database and play happily for hours, doing comparisons by sector or country, if that’s what turns you on. Tip: avoid including the UK 800 and the Europe 750 (which includes 175 UK firms) in the same search; you’ll pick up a lot of subsidiaries which might distort the results.

These are two subjects not normally seen together in a headline, but my intrepid exploration in recent weeks of the establishments recommended by the UK’s Good Pub Guide has, of necessity, also involved an investigation of their gentlemen’s facilities. These pubs usually have toilets better kept than most, but they still suffer that bane of the public loo, the electric hand dryer - noisy, unreliable, and either scalds you or doesn’t dry. But salvation is at hand(!), thanks to the maestros of design at Dyson. They’ve clearly thought about what the hand dryer is supposed to do, where it needs to operate, and the benefits for both the user (such as me) and the operator (the pub landlord).

For the user, the Dyson Airblade is faster (just 10 seconds), safer (ambient temperature air), cleaner (no touch operation, microbially-filtered air) and quieter (less noise in operation and only operates while your hands pass through the air stream).

For the landlord, the Dyson Airbade is elegant, quieter (not disturbing the pub atmosphere) and its annual running costs are less than one quarter those of the other air dryers (thanks to its lower power usage).

Not only great functionality (as I can attest), but an easy sell as well. Now that’s good design.

Seth Godin lists 34 steps to go through before you send an email. I particularly liked #34:

If I had to pay 42 cents to send this email, would I?

Not a bad test. If you had to buy a postage stamp to have that email delivered, would you? And even more telling, would you buy postage stamps for that email to be delivered to each and every person you’ve put in the To, Cc and Bcc boxes?

The prize for the most “something” headline so far this year must go to Max Keiser for his Huffington Post article (repeated in the title of this post). I just couldn’t find a word to describe it. Anyway, in case you haven’t guessed, it’s a rant against US investment banks:

Just before the crash of 1929 huge trusts operated by the largest banks on Wall Street were buying each other’s stock to try and delay the inevitable. It’s like the passengers of the Titanic trying to drink all the water in the ocean to avoid sinking.

And:

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it fall, does that stop Goldman, or Merrill, or some other investment bank from collateralizing the perceived sound and selling it as a hedge against some statistical probability worked out by an autistic ‘quant’ on loan from Bellevue working on the proprietary trading desk?

Is that the sound of one hand clapping, or is that the sound I make when I learn these mirror images of nothing-backed-bonds are in my pension account courtesy of non-falling trees sold by Merrill to boost their stock option related bonuses?

This man deserves a prize for inventive invective.

Why is Ford not as successful as Toyota these days? Harvard’s Professor John Quelch reckons it’s because Ford has been too timid to be a genuine global brand:

Over 20 years ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt praised Japanese manufacturers for their focus on “what every consumer in the world is seeking: world-class modernity at affordable prices.” Either because they didn’t understand regional differences in consumer preferences or out of self-confidence, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda sold standard products under a single brand umbrella.

For decades, Ford adapted its manufacturing platforms, features, and model names from one country to another. The results: added manufacturing and supply chain costs that strained consumers’ willingness to pay; a balkanized bureaucracy in which regional managers exaggerate the need for local adaptations to defend their turf; and a deteriorating market share, financial performance, and stock price.

So far so good. I thought he was onto a promising theme, but no. Unfortunately, Quelch then lists his 5 characteristics of top global brands:

1. The same positioning worldwide. This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola and Disney.
2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.
3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM.
4. Access to the global village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM’s “solutions for a small planet.”
5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world’s problems. Think Nestlé and clean water.

Hmmm.

1. Same positioning worldwide: Agreed. Also could have mentioned BMW, the BBC, et al.
2. Single product category: Disney? Films, theme parks, hotels, toys, clothing? All spin-offs of cartoon characters? GE? Power station equipment, trains, jet engines, appliances, financial services?
3. The company is the brand name: Agreed, but lots of sub-brands too (CocaCola has dozens).
4. Access to the global village: People buy Nokia or Toyota because they’re global? How about because they’re good products, well marketed at attractive prices?
5. Social responsibility: Good companies want to be good citizens, but this is a leap too far. Coke solving world problems? Puhleez!

1.5 out of 5. Not the standard of thinking I expect of a Harvard professor. See me after class.