Strategic Agility in MNEs: Managing Tensions to Capture Opportunities across Emerging and Established Markets

Traditional sources of sustainable competitive advantages are very rare in today's heterogeneous and hypercompetitive global business environment. This article identifies and illustrates three dynamic capabilities—sensing local opportunities, enacting global complementarities, and appropriating local value—by which MNEs are able to operate successfully across emerging and established markets. For MNEs in these markets, strategic agility is a meta-capability that enables them to create and deploy these three capabilities in a dynamic balance over time. Doing so demands embracing the tensions between these capabilities effectively.