MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Where To Next? Opportunity on the Edge

The Philippines isn’t new to foreign investment. Long considered one of the striving tiger cub economies, its bustling ports and big cities have represented attractive investment opportunities for companies like General Electric, KKR, and Cargill.1However, despite its prime location, young English-speaking workforce, and considerable natural-resource wealth, its performance lags behind that of its Association of Southeast Asian Nations peer.2 For foreign businesses looking for the next great opportunity, the Philippines would likely be ignored as “been there, done that.”

But what if we told you that almost one-third of the country’s land, and much of its trillion dollars of untapped mineral resources, are located on Mindanao, an isolated, war-torn island in the country’s south?3 Sitting in GE’s shiny Manila offices, we asked a group of executives, mostly Filipinos, about how to capture this opportunity. They looked aghast. One asked, “Why would one ever go there?”

About the Author

Emily S. Block is the George M. Cormie Chair of Management in the University of Alberta School of Business. Viva Ona Bartkus is professor emerita at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and the founder of its Business on the Frontlines program. They are the coauthors of Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places (Basic Books, 2024).

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