A World of Perspective
By Meghan Laska
Wharton’s Mauro Guillén on thriving in emerging economies.
At a recent meeting with Indian CEOs in Mumbai, Professor Mauro Guillén was asked to put the decline of the U.S. dollar into perspective. “Wouldn’t you want to be able to write checks that nobody deposits because people keep them in a safe place as a store of value?”
This simple yet cogent reply is typical of Guillén, the Dr. Felix Zandman Professor in International Management, Professor of Management and Sociology, and the new director of Wharton’s Joseph H. Lauder Institute for Management & International Studies.
When Guillén is not teaching and running the Lauder Institute, he is researching issues related to multinational corporations and the global economy. Guillén is author of the noted book, The Rise of Spanish Multinationals: European Business in the Global Economy, as well as many op-eds and articles on the subject. Increasingly, his advice and commentary are sought around the world.
Guillén’s next book will focus on emerging companies from emerging economies in Latin America, China, and India — and what makes them succeed or fail. Guillén, a native of León, Spain, is also studying international investments by U.S. venture capital firms. A“fun” project he is revisiting in this year of the summer Olympic Games looks at why some countries do better at sports than others.
“If you only know one country then you know no country because you have no perspective,” says Guillén, who knows many countries through his extensive international research. The Guggenheim Fellow won in 2005 the Fundación Banco Herrero Prize for best Spanish Social Scientist under the age of 40. “I’ve always thought that an interesting way of looking at the world is by comparing countries.”
- Emerging Companies in Emerging Economies
- VC Investors’ Leap of Faith
- An Olympic-Sized Study
- New Directions
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