Scott Gelbard's Blogger

The most common version of international market entry I have seen goes something like this: a company identifies an opportunity in a new geography, leadership gets excited, someone builds a business case, a budget is approved, a team is hired, and eighteen months later the company is deeply committed to a market it still does not fully understand. The question of how to enter is treated as a logistics question rather than a strategic one. People get hired. Offices get opened. Brand gets localized. And the question of whether the assumptions underlying the entire expansion were correct never gets properly tested until the company is too invested to course-correct without significant pain. I have advised businesses across North America, Europe, and Asia for over twenty-five years, and I have watched this pattern repeat across industries, company sizes, and geographies. The antidote — which the best international companies have learned to apply consistently — is the soft launch. W...

Several years ago, I was reviewing a mid-market company's strategic plan when their head of sales mentioned something in passing: three of their top ten clients had quietly hired internal people to do work they had previously outsourced. He framed it as a retention challenge. I heard something different — an early warning signal about where the industry was heading. Those clients were not defecting. They were showing us the future. That conversation eventually reshaped the company's entire service model. Not because of a consulting engagement or a market research report. Because someone was paying close enough attention to what their clients were actually doing. Over twenty-five years of advisory work across North America, Europe, and Asia, I have come to believe that one of the most underutilized strategic assets in any business is the intelligence embedded in its existing client relationships. Not the revenue. Not the referrals. The intelligence. The Intelligence Hidde...