Directed Opportunism: That's How Wal-Mart Went Global

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How did Wall-Mart go global? By using a strategy of "directed opportunism." And knowing how to clone its corporate DNA.

Becoming global is never exclusively the result of a grand design, though certainly it cannot be the result of incremental, ad hoc, opportunistic and random moves. The wisest approach would be one of "directed opportunism" - an approach that maintains opportunism and flexibility within a broad direction set by a systematic framework.

Wal-Mart stores is one of the best examples of the power of an explicit and systematic process to analyze the complex set of factors involved in becoming a global player.