Success in Fast-Growth Markets: Strategies for Smaller Players

While global trade was taking off over the past decade, Canada’s export performance flatlined. This is bad news: with its small domestic economy, Canada depends on trade to bolster its living standards. Fast-growth markets offer exporters greater growth potential than do traditional markets, but they don’t offer easy success. This briefing outlines how owners of small and medium-sized business can overcome the challenges of those markets. The analysis is rooted in a review of the evidence, accompanied by the experiences of a variety of Canadian and U.K. goods and services companies. Businesses can succeed in fast-growth markets if they realistically understand the challenges, offer a leading-edge technology, have a global reputation, find ways to piggyback on others’ local knowledge while developing their own deep understanding of the market, make coherent market entries that build on previous entries, and seriously commit to building relationships over the long term.

The briefing is part of the Conference Board Global Commerce Centre’s Tool Kit for Growth Markets. The kit includes tools and strategies for Canadian companies—and those who develop policies to support them—to succeed in fast-growth markets.