Competing for the Global Middle Class

In the 1920s, when Alfred P. Sloan Jr. reorganized General Motors Company, he promised shareholders “a car for every purse and purpose.”  Sloan tapped into a teeming middle-class market of Americans who couldn’t afford luxury cars, but nonetheless wanted product options far beyond the “any color so long as it’s black” Model T Ford. This immense U.S. middle-class cohort propelled GM past Ford into a leadership position among carmakers that lasted for the rest of the century. Today, leaders of multinational corporations have a similarly lucrative opportunity on a much bigger playing field:  a .....