Peter F. Drucker Boxed Set (8 Books) (The Drucker Library)

CHAPTER THREE

The Transnational Economy

TO MAINTAIN A LEADERSHIP position in any one developed country, a business—whether large or small—increasingly has to attain and hold leadership positions in all developed markets worldwide. It has to be able to do research, to design, to develop, to engineer and to manufacture in any part of the developed world, and to export from any developed country to any other. It has to go transnational.

This new need largely explains the worldwide boom in transnational direct investments. The front-runners are the British. Since 1983, British companies have spent at least $25 billion on acquiring American businesses—the ...