The Global Expansion of Lenovo
The following script is extracted from Mr. Liu's actual presentation at the Association of international Business plenary session, and incorporates selected questions raised by the audience at the end of his presentation, followed by a one-to-one interview. Mr. Chuanzhi Liu is the cofounder of Legend Holdings Ltd. Lenovo belongs to the Legend Holdings Group. Lenovo is the world's third largest manufacturer of personal computers (PCs), after Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP).
In this assignment, you are asked to address the following two tasks:
1) Based on Chuan Zhi Liu's presentation, critically discuss Lenovo's global expansion and how this fits with the Emerging MNEs' typical internationalisation process in terms of features, patterns and challenges. You should illustrate your answer with relevant theories or frameworks and examples you are familiar with.
2) The Lenovo-IBM acquisition brought together two firms with very different business models and cultures. Such a situation is prone to massive post-integration challenges. However, while some consider Lenovo's post-integration management a failure, many praise its success. In your view and based on your own research, how successful was Lenovo in managing its post-integration process? Illustrate your arguments with relevant examples.