Five Diamond Conference

The first Conference in this cycle of five conferences was held in April 28-29, 2008 at Columbia University in New York. The first conference dealt with the range of issues related to the key players in the OFDI process: firms, home countries and host countries.

The second Conference to be held August 10-11, 2009 at Fundação Dom Cabral in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, will focus on the challenges emerging market MNEs face when transnationalizing. The third Conference, to be held in 2010 at Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, will pay special attention to the policy responses of the home countries of emerging market MNEs in terms of what they can do to help their firms with the problems they face when transnationalizing.

The fourth Conference will focus on the challenges emerging market MNEs face in the countries in which they invest, both developed and developing ones. The fifth Conference, finally, will return to the entire range of issues related to the key players in the OFDI process, with a view toward drawing together what has been learned in the preceding Conferences and mapping the way forward.

In each Conference, particular emphasis will be placed on a dialogue between corporate executives and government officials, as well as academics. In other words, the Conferences look at the rise of emerging market MNEs in an integrated manner, addressing both corporate strategy and public policyoriented issues related to it. Moreover, to assure that each Conference starts from as accurate an understanding of the problématique as possible, a survey of MNEs and government officials will be conducted, focused on the theme of the Conference at hand and presented and published at the opening day of each Conference.

The Conference will bring together corporate executives, policymakers and other stakeholders to discuss ways that may allow emerging market MNEs and their home countries to become more integrated in the global economy, to the benefit of all parties. The participants will be a mix of corporate executives, government officials and academics. The peer reviewed papers, once revised in light of the Conference, will be published, to obtain a wider dissemination of the materials prepared for the Conference and its results.