Dragons at Your Door

In this summary you will learn

• How competitive, emerging Chinese companies, the nation’s daunting corporate “dragons,” use cost innovation to penetrate developed markets and seize market share
• How established companies can counter the Chinese competitive advantage and profit by building ties in China

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Why you should read Dragons at Your Door

Chinese firms have a cost advantage. That is not news. However, this may be the first book to point out that emerging Chinese competitors – companies as powerful as the “dragon” metaphor of the book’s title – also have a managerial advantage: Cost innovation, which involves much more than simply manufacturing products cheaply. Ming Zeng and Peter J. Williamson show how some of China’s leading manufacturers combine cheap labor, competitive domestic markets and technological innovation to forge a very powerful edge. The authors contend that Western firms may have to relocate high-value activities to China to counter its cost innovation advantage. getAbstract suggests that all companies can benefit from this suggestion to march forward instead of retreating in the face of Chinese cost-innovation competition.

About the Authors

Ming Zeng is a professor of strategy at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing. Peter J. Williamson is a professor of international management and Asian business at the INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau.