Handbook of Business Strategy

Purpose – In this article, we discuss four “hot” strategic opportunities for the next three-five year time frame arising from globalization and technology trends and present frameworks that can help business executives leverage these opportunities.

Design/methodology/approach – The methods used include review and synthesis of the academic and popular business literature to identify trends, opportunities and managerial problems, and conceptual analysis and inductive generalization of frameworks as useful tools for managers to deal with those opportunities.

Findings – Companies across a wide spectrum of industries have to contemplate and position themselves with respect to the following four strategic opportunities. R&D outsourcing may seem attractive from a cost perspective but appropriate safeguards have to be negotiated so that a company’s intellectual property does not get appropriated. Digital convergence requires firms to think creatively about complementary products and services without straying too far from their core competencies. Identifying customer needs and emerging markets needs new tools and techniques to be embraced for gathering market intelligence. Finally new technologies and business models should stimulate companies to develop policies on digital rights management after balancing stakeholder interests and assessing the threat of disruptive innovations.

Originality/value – This article identifies four current strategic opportunities that global firms should be thinking about if they are not doing so already. It discusses the benefits and challenges of getting into these areas with new technologies, new partners and new business processes. As such this article will be of interest to senior business executives responsible for setting the strategic direction of their company. Careful consideration and exploitation of these strategic opportunities will yield significant payoffs for proactive firms.