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 The global market place is changing at an ever increasing pace due to globalization, technology developments, energy and material scarcity, mounting environmental problems and the like. In addition, Europe imposes specific issues like the ongoing development of the unified market (EU), liberalization/deregulation of national industries, unique demographics (dozens of languages, a shrinking population) and significant cultural differences between the various countries.
In our consulting practice we experience that many non-European firms have difficulties to successfully balance local entrepreneurship with regional synergies. After a successful market entry and subsequent strong growth in Europe, many enter a stage in the organizational development (often due to external pressures from customers, competitors and / or regulators) where the key success factor of the past (i.e. local entrepreneurship) is no longer sufficient to guarantee future success.
This has been the starting point for Nolan, Norton & Co. to try and obtain insights in what the best practices for foreign firms with European operations are and when to apply them. To this extend we have contacted a variety of people working for European Headquarters of non-European firms in The Netherlands to discuss the relation between the way they have organized their firm
and the influence of boundary conditions like legislation, industry characteristics, origin of the firm, history in Europe, relative size of European operations, etc.
This research memorandum reflects the lessons learned, resulting from these discussions as well as from desk research that was conducted upfront. Companies involved have a very different background and customer base. Therefore this research memorandum can not be regarded as describing the European market as a whole; it does reflect our lessons learned.
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