Which Is More ImportantSimilarities or Differences?

The international strategy has seen significant changes in recent years. Multinational enterprises now have to evaluate their core uniqueness and how they can drive their uniqueness to be leveraged in the global marketplace better. For some, such thinking may represent a major shiftto focus on similarities across nations and customers instead of differences. This could be an important shift because companies and their people are trained to look for differences and form strategies based on satisfying the needs of customers with slight or significant differences across the globe. In the future, we may be looking for similarities first and then focusing on the similarities that outweigh the differences in tastes, wants, and needs.

Do you agree that focusing on similarities across countries is a better way to develop strategy than focusing on differences?