Unleash Innovation in Foreign Subsidiaries (2001)

The Challenge of Going Global is not simply to sell products wherever customers are but to take advantage of bright ideas wherever they spring up. Indeed, growth-triggering innovation often emerges in foreign subsidiaries – from employees closest to customers and least attached to the procedures and politesse of the home office. NCR’s automatic teller business, for instance, took off only when the development team shifted activities from corporate headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, to Dundee, Scotland. Under the guidance of a charismatic leader with scrappy persistence, NCR’s Scottish operation became the largest manufacturer of ATMs in the world and brought the moribund Dundee manufacturing centre back from the brink of extinction.