Rough Diamonds: The Four Traits of Successful Breakout Firms in BRIC Countries

Appendix: Methodology

We agree with the scholars and practitioners who routinely find that performance is multidimensional.¹ And since it would be misleading to judge a firm's performance by focusing on a single measure, we considered multiple ways of evaluating company performances in emerging markets. After analyzing the defining characteristics of emerging markets, we settled on this set of performance measures and corresponding metrics:

• Growth. In the past several years, emerging markets have outpaced more established economies in terms of rate of growth. The gross domestic product growth rate of advanced markets during the recession in 2009 was −3.16 percent, which stands in sharp contrast to emerging markets that grew at 2.39 percent during ...