**Assumption 2.** *Developed countries will always lead the global economy, others should follow their best practices.*

Since the end of WWII, industrialized nations have developed a new industrial order (Drucker 2017) and lowered trade barriers in order to boost global trade and foster peace among nations. This proven model for more than 70 years has propelled the US multinationals to unrivaled dominance. Therefore, all other countries tend to imitate the US (industrialized) model, especially developing or emerging countries.

### **Assumption 3.** *Developed countries have better institutions. Therefore, people who lead them know better.*

Among modern institutions, universities are considered as some of the oldest ones. They date back as far as the Middle Ages and were established in Europe (Altbach 1998) and used Latin as the common language (e.g., Bologna University, est. 1088 in Italy) to create and disseminate knowledge. This century-old process has attracted millions of students from the BRICS to Western Europe or to other developed countries that, over time, replaced Latin with English, as the lingua franca among scholars. Nonetheless, it took centuries for universities to create the concept of a business school.

The world's first collegiate business school was created in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1881 with a gift from entrepreneur and industrialist Joseph Wharton to produce graduates who would become "pillars of the state, whether in private or in public life."<sup>8</sup> Based on this intellectual legacy in industrialized or developed countries, the assumption has been that people who lead institutions in these countries know better.

### **Assumption 4.** *Emerging markets cannot produce world-class companies.*

For decades, the concentration of power in US firms has been accumulated in systematic and strategic fashion (White 2002). This dominance has been the source of much admiration around the world thanks to the Forbes and Fortune 500 lists that have now become a ranking mechanism of reputation (Bermiss et al. 2013) and prestige. Most of the firms in those list are American companies. Therefore, it is easy to assume that emerging markets cannot produce companies that could come close to rival with a world-class American company.

### **Assumption 5.** *Among institutions, universities and their business schools do not play a major role in society since business has been criticizing and ignoring business schools for decades.*

In the 1950s and as a result of in-depth reports (Gordon and Howell 1959; Pierson 1959), the American business schools' community was described as resembling trade schools which lacked academic rigor. These reports also recommended that business education leverages the model of medical and law school for business to become a profession so that business can find its place in society. Whereas the latter recommendation fell on deaf ears, the first one led to an (over)emphasis on analytical skills and theories. This produced more criticisms about business education lacking relevance (Pfeffer and Fong 2002) and the speculation as to whether the MBA will still exist in 2020 (Schlegelmilch and Howard 2011). In any case, the disconnect between business schools and the

<sup>8</sup> https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/about-wharton/.

business community has been clear and widely publicized (Skapinker 2011, 2008). Based on this, it can be assumed that business schools do not play a major role in society.

As reasonable as these assumptions may appear to be, they need to be checked against the chronology of multiple events and patterns across countries, institutions, and industries.

### **(B) Chronology: from the dream of the BRICS to the nightmare of the GFC**

In 2001 and in the developed world, many dreamed about the BRICs, not suspecting that a few years later, the 2008 GFC would become their worst nightmare. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost, due to greed and miscalculated risks in the developed world gave way to the BRICS and their emerging multinationals to rise. Unbeknownst to most in the developed world, the GFC also created some deep cracks in society (increased income inequality, financial bankruptcies), whereas the BRICS started collaborating with one another like never before. A closer look at the chronology of these events and the trends that materialized informs us about the "big picture" that has affected the global economy by taking into account what happened in both developed and emerging markets with a special look at the automotive industry, among other industries between 2000 and 2018 and as follows:


<sup>9</sup> https://seekingalpha.com/article/211305-the-shift-from-developed-to-emerging-markets-what-does-it-mean-forinvestors.

<sup>10</sup> https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20091228-2000-tata-tea-tetley-merger-the-cup-that-cheered-741660-2009-12-25.


<sup>11</sup> http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/news/article.php?id=2799469&archive=1&epic=500570.

<sup>12</sup> https://www.slideshare.net/AhmedALBilal/2017-q2-mckinsey-quarterly-global-forces.

<sup>13</sup> https://www.investing.com/indices/msci-emerging-markets-historical-data.

<sup>14</sup> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syngenta-ag-m-a-chemchina/chemchina-clinches-landmark-43-billion-takeoverof-syngenta-idUSKBN1810CU.

and escalation with other tariffs between the two countries), the conventional wisdom on the permanence of free trade agreements and free-trade policies started after WWII is rocked to its core. Major financial markets enter correction territory.


If we compare and contrast the assumptions with the events and patterns above, we might be able to uncover some unconventional wisdom, also known as strategic insights.
