Business information for emerging markets

Creating a strategy for capturing the business opportunities in emerging markets is at the top of the agenda for many companies. This article written by our library project manager Helen Edwards looks at what researchers and experts are writing about.

A recent influential book Winning in emerging markets: a road map for strategy and execution by Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu (Harvard Business School Press 2010) argues that the key characteristic of emerging market economies is institutional voids, the absence of the business systems, financial infrastructure, regulation and legislation, which facilitate business. The book introduces a five phase process for exploiting these voids as opportunities. This "portable" definition can be applied to any emerging market country. Harvard Business Publishing has also put together a collection of recent articles Thriving in emerging markets to be published in June 2011.

The Financial Times regularly publishes special reports on the BRIC countries, former CIS and the Middle East. Recent and about to be published reports include 20 May The New Trade Routes: India. This report shows how India, already known as the IT back office of the world, is challenging China on manufacturing, especially of telecomms and small cars. 23 May is Brazil China Trade 2011 speculating on the long term relationships within the BRICS, 27 May FT Wealth 2011 Emerging Markets Special and 16 June Russia and the World. The FT also has a dedicated blog beyondbrics: the FT's emerging market hub at which is this month celebrating its first birthday. This brings together news and views from over 40 correspondents in emerging markets around the world with graphical summaries of market data .

Mckinsey have just published Is your emerging market strategy local enough? recommending a strategy based on city clusters with case studies from China, India and Brazil.

Wharton School's famous blog Knowledge@Wharton has Indian, Spanish and Chinese editions, the last two also in local languages. Recent articles include microblogging in China, India's revised FDI guidelines and the potential for overheating in the economies of Latin America.
SKOLKOVO Institute for Emerging Markets (SIEMS) have devised a new Emerging Markets Index: Brave New World: categorizing the emerging market economies: a new methodology
This ranks 113 developing countries using 15 variables and grouped under four stages of emergence: advanced, intermediate, early and dormant.

There are several subscription services covering many countries. ISI's Emerging Market Information Service (EMIS) includes news, analysts' reports, market research and company information for more than 80 emerging markets from more than 20,000 sources. Other subscription sources of country data: macroeconomic trends, business environment, political risk and forecasts are the Economist Intelligence Unit and Business Monitor International